Curt Franklin Wittig is a professor of chemistry and the holder of the Paul A. Miller Chair in the college of letters, arts, and sciences at the University of Southern California (USC). Born and raised in Chicago, Illinois, Curt Wittig received his B.S. and Ph.D in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois in 1970. Post-doctoral work (EE at USC, chemistry at Cambridge (UK) and UC Berkeley) was followed by a faculty appointment in 1973 at USC in the EE Department. After becoming a professor in 1979, his interests changed, and he moved to the chemistry and physics departments in 1981, settling eventually in the chemistry department, where he has specialized in physical chemistry (chemical physics) ever since. Wittig and his wife, Michele, live in Santa Monica, California.

Research focus

His earliest contributions were technological: invention of the continuous carbon monoxide chemical laser in 1969, and development and demonstration of the so-called infrared process of laser isotope separation in the late 1970s. Interests then evolved to more fundamental studies. In the 1980s and 1990s his main contributions were in the areas of unimolecular reactions of polyatomic molecules, and photoinitiated reactions in weakly bound complexes. The latter was acknowledged in 1993 with the Herbert P. Broida Prize in Atomic, Molecular, and Chemical Physics (given by the American Physical Society); together they were acknowledged through the Bourke Lectures and Medal in 2000 (given by the Royal Society of Chemistry, UK). Recent research (including ongoing) addresses issues in amorphous solid water, photophysics in doped superfluid helium nanodroplets, complex photochemistry and photophysics of polyatomic molecules, and theories of particle statistics and geometric phases.

Publications

Book chapters

Selected articles

Awards and honors