Awards

National Academies - 1988

American Association for the Advancement of Science

About Joseph Gajewski

Joseph John Gajewski was born November 7, 1939 in Hammond, Indiana. He earned his B.S. in chemistry from Loyola University in Chicago and his Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Wisconsin in 1965 before serving as a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University in 1966. He joined the faculty of the Indiana University Department of Chemistry in 1966 and served for 38 years before his retirement in 2004. Gajewski is known for his work into the principles of physical organic chemistry. He was an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow and has published more than 100 research papers. His 1981 book, Hydrocarbon Thermal Isomerizations, was highly regarded.

His lab was also known for the comprehensive three-dimensional mapping of the concerted reactions of 1,5-hexadienes and allyl vinyl ethers, known respectively as Cope and Claisen Rearrangements. Gajewski and his colleague Kevin Gilbert developed PC Model, a powerful molecular modeling software package. Gajewski is a member of the American Chemical Society, the Petroleum Research Fund Advisory Committee of the ACS, the ACS Committee on Education, and he was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Research.