Hatcher Receives Geochemistry Medal

Patrick G. Hatcher has received the 2005 ACS Geochemistry Division Medal. The award was presented by ACS President William F. Carroll during the recent ACS national meeting in San Diego. Hatcher is a professor in the department of chemistry at Ohio State University and director of the Ohio State Environmental Molecular Science Institute. He received the award in recognition of his accomplishments in and contributions to organic and environmental geochemistry.

After receiving his Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Maryland in 1980, Hatcher took a position with the U.S. Geological Survey in Reston, Va., where he became one of the first organic/environmental geochemists to use solid-state NMR as principal analytical research instrumentation. In 1989, he began a faculty position at Pennsylvania State University, where he was ultimately appointed director of the Center for Environmental Chemistry & Geochemistry. It was during this period that he and his students began to explore the use of off-line tetramethyl ammonium hydroxide thermochemolysis. The TMAH methods derived by Hatcher and a number of his students have revolutionized the analysis of soil humics and other complex bio/geopolymers. He left Penn State for Ohio State in 1998.

Over the years, Hatcher has engaged a wide array of outstanding collaborators and students. His list of publications is packed with important papers to which he has provided the crucial ingredient--deeply insightful application of analytical techniques, such as thermochemolysis and NMR, that all too often are applied routinely and thus with a vastly lower return of information. The results stemming from this body of work have significantly advanced our understanding of natural materials like coal, kerogen, humic materials, dissolved organic matter, and resistant biopolymers (both lignin and microbial products). His work, now spanning several decades, has both refined and redefined our understanding of complex geopolymeric materials.