In Memory

Richard P Buck - Class Of 1946

Richard P Buck

Richard (Dick) Buck died July 22, 2011 of bladder cancer.  Dick was a retired professor of Chemistry at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.  He was highly regarded in Europe for his papers of discovery and traveled to Europe regularly to present papers to scientific groups.  Dick was also an accomplished pianist and was one of the lead pianists at the Bohemian Grove which he attended each summer for over 50 years.  Dick is survived by his wife Mary Ann, three children, and one grandchild.

David Weilein '47, Friend

Dick Buck is credited with writing the lovely music for the South Pasadena High School Alma Mater.  His classmate, Nancy (Scarfe) Roberts is credited with writing the words.

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Richard (Dick) Pierson Buck died in Palo Alto, California, his family at his side, just short of his 82nd birthday.  Dick was born in Los Angeles and grew up in San Marino, California.  He received his B.S. and M.S. from Caltech, and his Ph.D. from MIT in 1954.  He worked in industry in California until he joined the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1967.  He remained there until retirement in 2001, as professor of electrochemistry, becoming a leading scientist in his field with over 400 publications.  He made enormous contributions to the fields of electroanalytical chemistry and fundamental electrochemistry during his many years as an active researcher.

He traveled extensively in pursuit of his work and research, and proved an inspiration to a generation of his students.  He frequently collaborated with international chemists, especially in Eastern Europe, and developed a wide-ranging understanding of their history, music, and culture.  He was a valued partner and friend to colleagues around the world, and was recognized by his peers with several awards and memberships in national and international societies.

Music was his true love.  He was a talented pianist and an expert in musical history, with a broad knowledge of classical and popular music.  Other musicians loved to have him as their accompanist because of his ability to learn music quickly and his deep understanding of the repertoire.  He was a dedicated member of the Bohemian Club of San Francisco for 52 years.

He is survived by his wife of 52 years, Mary Ann; three children; and one granddaughter.

The News and Observer, Raleigh, North Carolina, July 31, 2011

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Professor Richard P. Buck retired from the faculty at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill after an illustrious industrial and academic career that spanned nearly 50 years.  A native of Los Angeles, Dick Buck stayed close to home to receive his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Chemistry from the California Institute of Technology in 1950 and 1951, respectively.  He then traveled east and earned his Ph.D. in 1954 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he worked with David N. Hume.  Following his graduate work, Buck carried out fundamental research on fuel cells and other electrochemical systems at the California Research Corporation.  He later moved to Bell & Howell, and then Beckmann Instruments.  His experiences at Beckmann in the early days of electrochemical sensors and membrane electrodes helped pave the way for him to become the preeminent academic researcher in this field once he joined the faculty at Chapel Hill in 1967.

Dick made enormous contributions to the fields of electroanalytical chemistry and fundamental electrochemistry during his many years as an active researcher.  He is the author/coauthor of more than 240 original research papers, dating back to his earliest work on the first constant-current dual intermediate titrimetric scheme that was published in Analytical Chemistry in 1952.  In the '60s and '70s he focused his efforts on the theory of interfacial potential development and selectivity of solid-state and glass membrane electrodes, including very tedious calculations of potential profiles that exist at electrode/membrane interfaces; using numerical solutions of the Nernst-Planck-Poisson equation.  He was one of the very first to apply impedance methods to delineate the charge-transfer kinetics at the interfaces and within the bulk of membrane electrodes, including the development of improved instrumentation to carry out such impedance measurements.

As newer organic liquid-and-polymer-membrane-based ion-selective electrodes began to emerge in the 1970s, Dick turned his attention to understanding the ion permselectivity of such membranes, including an in-depth effort to define the role of endogenous and exogenous lipophilic counterion sites in preventing interfacial Donnan failure at high concentrations of analyte ions.  He later went on to pioneer the development of novel microfabricated ion and biosensor arrays based on flexible Kapton substrates, and further demonstrated that such devices can be implanted within living heart muscle to provide the first real time measurements of key ions, H+, K+, etc., and metabolites, e.g., lactate, in such tissue.

Richard Buck's research contributions go beyond the classical electrochemistry boundaries.  Indeed, several of his early academic papers dealt with spark sources for mass spectrometry, spectral deconvolution methods, Raman spectroscopy of adsorbates on electrode surfaces, etc.  As one nominating letter writer for his 2001 Reilly Award put it, "these (other) contributions clearly illustrate the great breadth of his knowledge and interests...and the high scholarly quality of his work (electroanalytical and other) over an extended time period makes him especially worthy of receiving SEAC's highest honor."

Chemistry, University of North Carolina