Awards

International Academies - 1985

Royal Society of Chemistry

National Academies - 1980

American Association for the Advancement of Science

Guggenheim Fellow - 1965

About Riley O. Schaeffer

Professor Schaeffer began his academic career at Iowa State University in 1952 as an Assistant Professor and he became Associate Professor with tenure in 1956. In 1958 he was recruited to join the faculty at Indiana University where he became Professor in 1962. After a highly productive career at IU, including a stint as departmental Chair, 1967-1972, he accepted the position of Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Wyoming in 1976. He was recruited from that position to UNM where he served as Department of Chemistry Chairperson from 1981-1987 and he retired from UNM in 1992.

Under his able leadership as Chair, Prof. Schaeffer guided the hiring and mentoring of a number of new faculty who have gone on to highly productive careers. Professor Schaeffer has also had a distinguished research record that includes critical discoveries in the synthesis, reactivity and structure analysis, via x-ray diffraction and NMR methods, of boron hydrides and carboranes. Professor Schaeffer received numerous honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship; he is an AAAS Fellow and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Britain.

He passed away on April 15, 2018 at the age of 90.