Professor Hall obtained his B. S. degree in Chemistry from Juniata College. Following his Ph. D. work with Richard Fenske at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, he was awarded an AEI postdoctoral fellowship in theoretical chemistry at the University of Manchester, England, where he studied with Ian Hillier. Professor Hall’s career at Texas A&M University began in 1975 when he accepted an appointment as Assistant Professor of Chemistry. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 1980 and Professor in 1983. He served as Head of the Department from 1986 to 1994, and as Executive Associate Dean in the College of Science from 1997 to 2017. He founded and has directed the Laboratory of Molecular Simulation since 1997 and was named Davidson Professor of Science in 2004. His research interests are directed toward understanding chemical structures, reactions, and catalysis through state-of-the-art quantum calculations. Applications transition-metal activation of carbon-hydrogen and carbon-carbon bonds, and biocatalysis by metalloenzymes are among his current interests. He has served on the editorial advisory board of the Organometallics and Theoretical Chemistry Accounts; and on the Advisory Board of the Center for Molecular Electrocatalysis an EFRC center at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

Gabor A. Somorjai has been a leader in the field of Catalysis for more than 45 years. He has published almost 1200 papers and 4 books. He received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 1960 and he was appointed to the faculty there in 1964. Since then, he has won just about every honor in his field. In 2011 he was the recipient of the Honda Prize, the ENI New Frontiers of Hydrocarbons Prize and the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award. He has received the Priestley Medal (2008), the National Medal of Science (2002) the Wolf Prize (1998). Somorjai became a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1979 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1983