Richard Zare

About

Richard Zare is the Marguerite Blake Wilbur Professor of Natural Science and a Professor, by courtesy, of Physics at Stanford University. He earned his BA in Chemistry and Physics from Harvard University in 1961 and his PhD in Chemical Physics from Harvard in 1964, where he studied photodissociation dynamics under Professor Dudley Herschbach. His postgraduate work was conducted at the University of California at Berkeley in 1963. Zare has held faculty positions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Colorado, and Columbia University before joining Stanford in 1977. He is recognized as a pioneer in the use of lasers to study chemical reactions at the molecular level, with significant contributions to analytic chemistry, including the development of laser-induced fluorescence to study reaction dynamics and understanding molecular collision processes. His research spans diverse areas in physical chemistry and nanoscale chemical analysis, focusing on tools and techniques to analyze molecules in extremely tiny volumes, such as in heterogeneous mineral structures or cellular compartments. Zare has also contributed to the chemical analysis of liquid samples using electrophoresis and electrochromatography, and has pioneered methods like cavity ring-down spectroscopy and mass spectrometric imaging of tissue samples. His work continues to explore fundamental questions in chemical reactions and analysis, including extraterrestrial materials. Born in 1939 in…

Research topics

• Chemistry
• Organic chemistry
• Chemical physics
• Physics
• Materials science
• Thermodynamics
• Physical chemistry
• Classical mechanics
• Chromatography
• Nanotechnology

Selected publications

• Strong Electric Field Observed at the Interface of Aqueous Microdroplets

  The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters · 2020 · 420 citations

  V/cm. This strong electric field aligns probe dipoles with respect to the interface. The formation of the electric field likely arises from charge separation caused by the adsorption of negative ions at the water-oil interface of microdroplets. We suggest that this strong electric field might account in part for the unique properties of chemical reactions reported in microdroplets.

  DOI

• Condensing water vapor to droplets generates hydrogen peroxide

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2020 · 241 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  from water microdroplets is a general phenomenon. These findings provide innovative opportunities for green chemistry at heterogeneous interfaces, self-cleaning of surfaces, and safe and effective disinfection. They also may have important implications for prebiotic chemistry.

  DOI

• Simple model for the electric field and spatial distribution of ions in a microdroplet

  The Journal of Chemical Physics · 2020 · 194 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  It is well established that the chemistry in microdroplets has been found to be radically different from reactions in bulk, particularly in the case of water. It has also been established that there is a threshold size for microdroplets to behave differently than droplets near the 10 µm diameter range. We present a three-dimensional electrostatic treatment in the spirit of the Gouy-Chapman model for double layers at interfaces. Our treatment predicts a strong concentration of charged molecules t…

  DOI

• SDHB knockout and succinate accumulation are insufficient for tumorigenesis but dual SDHB/NF1 loss yields SDHx-like pheochromocytomas

  Cell Reports · 2022 · 39 citations

  Inherited pathogenic succinate dehydrogenase (SDHx) gene mutations cause the hereditary pheochromocytoma and paraganglioma tumor syndrome. Syndromic tumors exhibit elevated succinate, an oncometabolite that is proposed to drive tumorigenesis via DNA and histone hypermethylation, mitochondrial expansion, and pseudohypoxia-related gene expression. To interrogate this prevailing model, we disrupt mouse adrenal medulla SDHB expression, which recapitulates several key molecular features of human SDHx…

  DOI

• Interfacial Curvature, not Simply Size, Controls Spontaneous Hydrogen Peroxide Formation in Water Microdroplets

  Journal of the American Chemical Society · 2025-08-30 · 30 citations

  articleSenior authorCorresponding

  Micron-sized water droplets promote redox reactions that are absent in bulk water, yet the kinetics of these interfacial processes remain poorly understood. Here we use real-time fluorescence imaging to monitor spontaneous hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) generation in individual microdroplets. Both the apparent production rate and equilibrium concentration of H2O2 increase with decreasing droplet size, even after normalizing for surface area, revealing an intrinsic curvature-dependent enhancement. This…

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Coherent Control of Cold Collision by Preparing Molecular Eigenstates Using Stark-Induced Adiabatic Passage

  NSF · $464k · 2021–2024

• State-to-State Reaction Dynamics

  NSF · $2.0M · 2003–2008

• Microfluidics-Based Single-Cell Chemical Analysis of Cyanobacteria

  NSF · $476k · 2008–2011

Frequent coauthors

• Hans A. Bechtel

  Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

  81 shared

• Jon P. Camden

  University of Notre Dame

  76 shared

• S. J. Clemett

  70 shared

• Davida J. Ankeny Brown

  Stanford University

  68 shared

• Marion Martin

  64 shared

• George C. Schatz

  Northwestern University

  52 shared

• Diego Troya

  Virginia Tech

  52 shared

• Wenfang Hu

  University of Science and Technology of China

  52 shared

Labs

• Center for Molecular Analysis and DesignPI

Education

• B.S., Chemistry

  Harvard University

  1963

• Ph.D., Chemistry

  Stanford University

  1967

Awards & honors

• National Medal of Science
• Wolf Prize in Chemistry
• Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, a…
• 11 honorary doctorates

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