Leo Brewer - Academic Career

Academic Career

In 1946, following his service as a member of the Manhattan Project, Brewer was appointed an assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of California. He rose steadily through the ranks, achieving the rank of full professor in 1955. Brewer served as a faculty member of the Department of Chemistry for over sixty years, during which time he directed 41 Ph.D. candidates, and nearly two-dozen post-doctoral research associates.

In addition to his academic appointment, Brewer was associated with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (formerly the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory) from 1943–1994, and served as Director of the Inorganic Materials Research Division of LBNL from its inception in 1961 until 1975.

Brewer's dual appointment afforded him the opportunity to take an active role in all levels of academic instruction, both inside and outside of the laboratory. Besides providing classroom instruction in solid-state chemistry, heterogeneous equilibria, and inorganic chemistry, Brewer also delivered lectures and supervised laboratory work for laboratory courses in freshman chemistry, advanced quantitative analysis, instrumental analysis, inorganic synthesis, inorganic reactions, and organic chemistry, as well as courses in chemical thermodynamics from the sophomore to graduate student level. In order to ensure a high standard of instruction at even the most basic levels, Brewer initiated a course for freshman-chemistry teaching assistants that reviewed principles and certified their ability to adequately fulfill their responsibilities.

Brewer was a caring and gifted teacher who was greatly admired by students and colleagues alike. In 1966 he was selected by the Academic Senate at UC Berkeley to deliver the annual Faculty Research Lecture. The title of his lecture was, "A Broad University Education Leads to Astrochemistry." In 1988, in recognition of his achievements as an educator, he received the Henry B. Linford Award for Distinguished Teaching from the Electrochemical Society. Upon his official retirement from the University of California, Berkeley in 1989, he was presented with the Berkeley Citation, and an academic symposium was held in his honor.