Chadwick A. Tolman

Tolman was presented the Delaware Audubon Conservation Award at the Delaware Audubon Society Annual Meeting on October 9, 2009.

Tolman has followed and communicated about climate change issues for over 20 years. He writes a monthly electronic blog, Climate Change News. He helped write the Statement of Conscience on the Threat of Global Warming/Climate Change for the Unitarian Universalist Association which was adopted by their General Assembly in 2006.

Upon retirement from DuPont in 1996, Tolman taught at Delaware Technical & Community College and University of Delaware for a year before joining the National Science Foundation as a program officer in the Chemistry Division. That was followed by two years at the National Academy of Science in the Division of Earth and Life Sciences. His work there included studies and major reports on air pollution and air quality management.

He joined DuPont Central Research in 1965. His early work was on late transition metal complexes with phosphorus ligands. The Tolman cone angle and Tolman electronic parameter are named after him. In 1972, he proposed the 16 and 18 electron rule, extending Irving Langmuir's 18-Electron rule to include the many examples of stable 16 electron square planar d complexes. Later work focused on the activation of C-H bonds by transition metal complexes and free radical oxidation of cyclohexane for the production of adipic acid, an intermediate in the manufacture of nylon.

Chadwick A. Tolman (born 1938) is an American chemist. He obtained his B.S. in Chemistry from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He earned his Ph.D. in Chemistry as a microwave spectroscopist from U.C. Berkeley under the guidance of William Dulaney Gwinn.