Henry Taube, 89, Won Chemistry Nobel

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Henry Taube, a Nobel Prize-winning pioneer of chemistry, died Wednesday at his home in Palo Alto, Calif. He was 89, and had been a professor at Stanford University.


Taube was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1983 for work in explaining chemical reactions in everything from photosynthesis in plants to batteries and fuel cells.


In February, the science journal Coordination Chemistry Reviews published a special issue to honor Taube and his work. He won many awards, including two Guggenheim fellowships and the National Medal of Science in 1977.


“I worked for many years in almost total obscurity doing what I thought was interesting,” Taube told the Associated Press in 1983.


The Canadian native was born Nov. 30, 1915 in Neudorf, Saskatchewan, earning a bachelor of science degree in 1935 and a master of science degree two years later at the University of Saskatchewan.


He earned a doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley in 1940 and taught there until 1941, when he moved Cornell University.


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