HAUPTMAN, HERBERT AARON

HAUPTMAN, HERBERT AARON (1917– ), U.S. mathematician and Nobel laureate in chemistry. Hauptman was born in New York City and received his B.S. at City College (1937), M.A. at Columbia University (1939), and Ph.D. from the University of Maryland (1954) in mathematics after serving in the U.S. Navy in World War II from 1942. He was a staff member of the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C. (1947–70), before joining the crystallography group of the Medical Foundation of Buffalo (now the Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute), where he became research director in 1972 and then president. He was also research professor in the departments of biophysical sciences and computer science of the University of Buffalo. Hauptman's research work stems from his collaboration with the physicist Jerome Karle starting in 1947. They developed mathematical methods for establishing the structure of complex molecules which could previously only be determined by time-consuming, classical crystallographic techniques of more limited scope and accuracy. He was awarded the Nobel Prize jointly with Jerome Karle (1985), the only mathematician to have received the award in chemistry. His Nobel lecture discusses the integration of direct and mathematical techniques for establishing molecular structure. Subsequently he continued to refine these methods, which are in universal use in basic and medical research and in drug design. He remained actively involved in the work of the institute named after him, which studies protein structure, protein interactions, and the alterations predisposing to disease. His many honors include the Gold Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement (1986), election to the U.S. National   Academy of Sciences (1988), and an honorary degree from Bar-Ilan University (1990). (Michael Denman (2nd ed.)