Research Professor, Chemistry Department
310 Physical Sciences Laboratory Building
419.372.2035
rmw@bgsu.edu

Biographical Facts:

Joined the faculty in 2005
Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1965)
B.S., The Pennsylvania State University (1961)  

Research Interests:

Our research interests are directed towards photochemical application of lasers, primarily argon ion lasers, and fall into two broad categories: the laser synthesis of new materials and the development of reagents for the photochemical manipulation of biological systems.  These include:

• The use of CW laser plasmas to prepare carbon bowls, Bucky Bowls and the study of the properties of these bowl-shaped “aromatic” hydrocarbons.
• The development of new reagents for the photochemical cross-linking of nucleic acids, primarily RNA, with proteins.
• The development of new reagents for the photochemical cleavage of nucleic acids, primarily RNA.
• The development of the aforementioned two techniques to study the interactions between nucleic acids and proteins using mass spectrometry to obtain detailed structural information about the nature of these interactions.

Selected Publications:

“The Vocabulary of Organic Chemistry”, 2nd Edition, Wiley-Interscience, 2005, with Milton Orchin, Allan Pinhas, and Roger Macomber.

“Photoaffinity Labeling with 8-Azidoadenosine and Its Derivatives: The Chemistry of Closed and Open Adenosine Diazaquinodimethanes”, Biochemistry, 2005, 44, 11241-11253, with Dmitrii Polshakov, Saroj Rai, Eric T. Mack, Martin Vogel, Jeanette Krause, Gotard Burdzinski, and Matthew S. Platz.

“DNA Photocleavage and Biological Activity of a Pyrene Dihydrodioxin”, Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry Letters, 2005, 15, 2173-2176, with Eric T. Mack, Dagne Birzniece, Darren Veach, and William Coyle.

“Thermal and Photochemistry of a Pyrene Dihydrodioxin (PDHD) and Its Radical Cation: A Photoactivated Masking Group for ortho-Quinones”, Journal of the American Chemical Society, 2004, 126, 15324, with Eric T. Mack, A. Björn Carle, and J. T.-M. Liang, W. Coyle.