Herbert L. Strauss

In 1957, he met Carolyn North Cooper at a church in Manhattan during a midnight mass, despite both being Jewish. He and Carolyn had three children together. He enjoyed cycling, and commuted to and from campus each day via bicycle. Strauss died on December 2, 2014 at his home in Berkeley, California at the age of 78.

From 1976 to 2000, he was the editor of the Annual Review of Physical Chemistry. From 1995–2008, he was the Associate Dean of Undergraduate Affairs. He officially retired from Berkeley in 2003, though continued to teach until shortly before his death.

In 1976, he was elected as a fellow to the American Physical Society. In 1994, he won both the Bomem-Michelson Prize for Spectroscopy and the Lippincott Award for Vibrational Spectroscopy. In 2003 he received the Berkeley Citation and Berkeley Faculty Service Award.

Herbert Leopold Strauss (March 26, 1936–December 2, 2014) was an American chemist who specialized in spectroscopy. His family fled Nazi Germany and eventually immigrated to New York, where he graduated from Columbia University. He spent the entirety of his career at the University of California, Berkeley.

Herbert Leopold Strauss, who went by "Herb", was born on March 26, 1936 in Aachen, Germany to parents Joan and Charles Strauss. He had a younger brother, Walter. The Strauss family escaped Germany in 1939, arriving in England. While in London, Herbert Strauss was temporarily placed in an orphanage, where he became seriously ill from bronchitis and nearly died. The family eventually immigrated to Kew Gardens, Queens in New York City. There, his father worked as a real estate agent and his mother worked in a clothing store. Strauss received both a bachelor's degree (1957) and a PhD (1960) in chemistry from Columbia University.