Award to honor beloved prof

Ralph N. Adams, pictured here in 1982, is being remembered by students and colleagues through a national award and KU professorship in his name. Adams, who died in 2002, was known for his straightforwardness and informality. University Archives, Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas Libraries

Two years after the death of a nationally renowned and beloved KU distinguished professor of chemistry, his former students and colleagues are finding ways to keep his memory alive.

The inaugural Ralph N. Adams Award in Bioanalytical Chemistry will be presented to Iowa State University Professor Edward S. Yeung Feb. 28 during the Pittsburgh Conerence, an analytical sciences and instrumentation conference in Orlando, Fla.

Former students, family, colleagues and friends of the late professor are endowing the annual international award, which will include a plaque, a $2,500 honorarium and a symposium.

A group of alumni and friends previously established funding for the endowed Ralph N. Adams Professorship in the Department of Chemistry at KU.

“ Adams was the father of bioanalytical chemistry and was one of the faculty members who brought fame to the chemistry department at the University of Kansas,” said Craig Lunte, chair of chemistry at KU. “He was one of our most important chemistry faculty. He also was quite beloved.”

To his students and colleagues, Adams was known for his straightforwardness and informality. Former student Ted Kuwana, emeritus professor of chemistry at KU, said those characteristics translated to Adams’ behavior and dress.

“ Most of the time he never wore socks,” Kuwana said. “If he’d had his druthers, he probably wouldn’t have worn shoes–a hangover from his days of growing up on the New Jersey beaches. That was his casual nature.

“ There was no barrier to students in their access to him. He was one of the most unassuming and unpretentious individuals I have ever known.”

Nationally renowned and recognized for his decades of work, Adams was among the first scientists to receive a Higuchi/Endowment Research Achievement Award. Adams was nominated for a Nobel Prize in 1997.

Adams retired from KU as professor emeritus of chemistry in 1992. He died Nov. 28, 2002, after a short illness. He was 78.