The Department of Chemistry mourns the passing and celebrates the extraordinary life of Professor David H. Waldeck. Professor Waldeck made pioneering contributions across many areas of chemistry and materials science. In particular, in collaboration with Ron Naaman, he co-discovered the chiral-induced spin selectivity (CISS) effect, revealing fundamentally new properties of chiral molecules and offering fresh insight into the role of homochirality in living systems. Their work opened avenues for novel applications in chemistry, biology, and physics, and the CISS effect has since been explored by hundreds of research laboratories worldwide.
Professor Waldeck was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. He earned his Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Chicago in 1983 and was an IBM Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley from 1983 to 1985. In 1985, he began his independent career as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at the University of Pittsburgh, where he rose to the rank of Distinguished Professor. He served as Department Chair from 2005 to 2014 and, beginning in 2015, as Academic Director of The Gertrude E. and John M. Petersen Institute of NanoScience and Engineering.
Professor Waldeck’s research program employed spectroscopy, electrochemistry, and microscopy to investigate primary processes in the condensed phase and in nanoscale assemblies. Over the course of his career, he published more than 270 research papers and three monographs, including the textbook Principles of Physical Chemistry. He received numerous honors, including the ACS Award in Experimental Physical Chemistry, the ISE Bioelectrochemistry Prize, the Morley Medal, the Pittsburgh Award, the ACS-WCC Award for Encouraging Women in Chemistry (Pittsburgh Section), and the Chancellor’s Distinguished Research Award. He was elected a Fellow of the American Chemical Society, the American Physical Society, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
On the occasion of receiving the Pittsburgh Award in 2013, Professor Waldeck reflected on his scientific motivation: “My own personal major motivation is really more the basic science and really trying to understand it. ... Although I'm personally an experimentalist and try to design experiments that let me test ... or learn the limits of models ... I'm much more a person who wants to develop the underlying theoretical explanation of how things work.”
A memorial service will be held on September 4th, 2026, 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM.
