Ray Davis (1938-2013)

Raymond Edward Davis was born November 7, 1938 in Hobbs, New Mexico. At the U. of Kansas at Lawrence he was honored with a membership in Phi Beta Kappa and, in 1960, received a Bachelor Degree in Chemistry. He married his high-school sweetheart. He received his PhD in 1964 where he worked with Al Tulinsky at Yale U., and was a post-doc with David Harker at Roswell Park Memorial Inst. in Buffalo, New York. Ray accepted a position as an assistant professor in the Chemistry Department of the University of Texas at Austin in the fall of 1966.

Ray had a passion for teaching. He received the Outstanding Teacher Award given by campus freshman honor societies five times. In 1995, he was an inaugural member of the University of Texas's Academy of Distinguished Teachers, and was eventually made a University Distinguished Teaching Professor Emeritus. He coauthored The Principles of General Chemistry with Ken Whitten and completed the 10th edition of this textbook with George Stanley of LSU in 2012. Several editions have been translated into other languages. Ray also wrote high-school chemistry texts, and was an early proponent of hands-on undergraduate research projects.

Ray was Local Chair for the San Antonio ACA meeting in 2002. A paper on hydrogen-bonding analysis using graph sets by Ray and Joel Bernstein that was published in Angewandte Chemie has had more than 5500 citations.

Ray spent every day loving life, family, music, history and photography and simply learning something new. After moving to the country near Salado Village, Texas, Ray discovered a new love - watching and identifying hundreds of birds.

Ray's friends and former students created the Raymond E. Davis Endowment Scholarship in Chemistry and Biochemistry in his honor. Ray's passing has left a big empty hole in the lives and hearts of all who were privileged to love and know him.

The full article can be found in ACA RefleXions, Fall, 2013.