William B. Tolman

In the summer of 2022, Tolman became the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of St. Thomas, in St. Paul, Minnesota.

As UMN Chemistry Department Chair in 2017, Tolman was one of four administrators notified about, and provided the results of, an investigation into allegations involving UMN biochemistry and chemistry professor Gianluigi Veglia's. Tolman left UMN the following year for a position at Washington University in St. Louis. After news of the investigation became public in 2021, the UMN Chemistry Department put out a statement condemning the actions of Gianluigi Veglia, and the UMN president released a statement describing the university's response.

Tolman is the recipient of many awards for his research, including an ACS Award for Distinguished Service in the Advancement of Inorganic Chemistry in 2017, the Charles E. Bowers Teaching Award from the University of Minnesota in 2012, a Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Research Award for 2004–2005, a Buck-Whitney Medal from the ACS Eastern New York Section in 2001, a Camille & Henry Dreyfus Teacher–Scholar Award in 1999, and a Searle Scholars Award in 1992.

He was elected a Fellow of the American Chemical Society in 2010, and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2006.

Tolman began his independent career in 1990, as an assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities (UMN). He was appointed a Distinguished McKnight University Professor in 2000. He previously served as the Chair of the Department of Chemistry at UMN, from 2009 to 2016. In 2018, Tolman moved with his research group to Washington University in St. Louis. Generally, Tolman's research group works on the synthesis of bioinorganic coordination complexes that model the active sites of metalloproteins, as well as the synthesis of organometallic complexes for the polymerization of cyclic esters.

Tolman then moved on to graduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley, where he worked in the laboratory of Prof. K. Peter C. Vollhardt as a W. R. Grace Graduate Fellow. In Vollhardt's laboratory, Tolman studied photochemistry and ligand substitution reactions of bimetallic coordination complexes with the fulvalene ligand. Tolman graduated with a Ph.D. in chemistry in 1987.

William B. Tolman (born May 20, 1961, in Cleveland, Ohio) an American inorganic chemist focusing on the synthesis and characterization of model bioinorganic systems, and organometallic approaches towards polymer chemistry. He has served as Editor in Chief of the ACS journal Inorganic Chemistry, and as a Senior Investigator at the NSF Center for Sustainable Polymers. Tolman is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Chemical Society.

Tolman was born on May 20, 1961, in Cleveland, Ohio, but grew up in Chelmsford, Massachusetts. He received his B.A. in chemistry from Wesleyan University in 1983, where he conducted organometallic chemistry research with Prof. Alan R. Cutler. With Prof. Culter, Tolman studied the bimetallic activation of coordinated ligands of molybdenum cyclopentadienyl complexes.