Purdue News
Purdue News
Dale W. Margerum, professor of chemistry, has been named the Harvey Washington Wiley Distinguished Professor of Chemistry. Ahmed H. Sameh has been named the Samuel D. Conte Professor of Computer Science.
Margerum joined the Purdue faculty in 1954. His research has focused on a variety of problems in analytical, inorganic, bioinorganic and environmental chemistry. He is best known for his studies of the rates and pathways of chemical reactions in solution. His current work focuses on how such reactions relate to environmental problems, such as hazardous byproducts that can form in water during the treatment process.
Last year, Margerum received the American Chemical Society's Award for Distinguished Service in the Advancement of Inorganic Chemistry.
Margerum also is internationally recognized for his work in developing new methods and instrumentation to detect and analyze very fast reactions in solutions. He and his students have developed an instrument, called a pulsed-accelerated-flow spectrometer, that measures reaction rates one thousand times faster than previous methods.
Using these new techniques, Margerum and his group have been able to further scientific knowledge of how reactions take place, nullifying several previously established theories.
Margerum received a bachelor's degree from Southeast Missouri State University in 1950, and a doctoral degree from Iowa State University in 1955. He served as head of Purdue's Department of Chemistry's Inorganic Chemistry Division from 1968 to 1973, and as head of the department from 1978 to 1983.
Ahmed H. Sameh, professor and head of the Department of Computer Science, has been named the Samuel D. Conte Professor of Computer Science. Sameh joined the Purdue faculty in January. Before coming to Purdue he served as head of computer science at the University of Minnesota, where he also held the William Norris Chair in Large-Scale Computing.
Sameh is internationally recognized for his work in various aspects of scientific computing. His work in developing numerical linear algebra algorithms for parallel computers resulted in new approaches for developing numerical software on various parallel architectures. His studies have influenced the design of some parallel architectures and corresponding system software, as well as the development of various science and engineering application software.
His current research interests include numerical linear algebra with emphasis on parallel computing, the design and performance analysis of parallel numerical algorithms, and the design of application-specific problem solving environments.
Sameh received a bachelor's degree in civil engineering from the University of Alexandria, Egypt, and master's and doctoral degrees from the Georgia Institute of Technology and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, respectively. He was a faculty member of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Illinois (1968 - 1991 & 1992-1993), and associate director (1985 - 1991) and later director (1992-1993) of its Center for Supercomputing Research and Development.
He is a member of the Association of Computing Machinery and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He serves on several journal editorial boards in his field and was the founding editor-in-chief, and currently editor, of IEEE Computational Science and Engineering.
The Agricultural Research Building has been renamed the Roy L. Whistler Hall of Agricultural Research in honor of a professor emeritus internationally known for his work as a carbohydrate chemist. In 1986 the university established the Whistler Center for Carbohydrates in its Department of Food Science.
Whistler is best known for his work in the industrial use of agricultural products. He helped develop the use of guar gum, commonly used to give whipped toppings, ice cream and sauces a creamy texture. It also makes low-fat foods more palatable and can be pumped into the Earth under pressure to help recover crude oil from wells. He also worked with starch amylose, a substance used to make hard, translucent gum drops.
He has written more than 500 scientific papers, written or edited 15 books and been honored with numerous national and international awards. He has been a major philanthropist to the university.
Writer: Jeanne V. Norberg, (765) 494-2084; e-mail, jeanne_norberg@purdue.edu
Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; e-mail, purduenews@purdue.edu
NOTE TO JOURNALISTS: Black-and-white photographs of Dale W. Margerum and Ahmed H. Sameh are available from Purdue News Service, (765) 494-2096.
