Biographical sketch

Jan M.L. (Gershom) Martin

Narrative capsule bio

Prof. Gershom (Jan) Martin was born in Belgium in 1964. Following undergraduate chemistry studies in Hasselt and Antwerp, he obtained his Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Antwerp in 1991 with Renaat Gijbels and Jean-Pierre Francois. He postdoc'ed with Drs. Timothy J. Lee and Peter R. Taylor at NASA Ames Research Center (in the heart of Silicon Valley), then moved down to San Diego with Dr. Taylor when the latter accepted a faculty position at UCSD. Having been first a doctoral, then a postdoctoral, fellow of the National Fund for Scientific Research, he was given a permanent appointment by the latter in 1995. In passing, he obtained his Habilitation (university faculty qualification then extant in Belgium) in 1994.

After a stint in the laboratory of Prof. Chava Lifshitz (z"l) at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1996, he accepted a faculty position at the Weizmann Institute of Science, where he got tenure in 2001 and was promoted to full professor in 2005. He spent the year July 2007-June 2008 on sabbatical with Prof. George C. Schatz at Northwestern University. Since July 1, 2008, he has been serving as a Senior Advisor to the President of the Weizmann Institute.

Dr. Martin won a number of awards, including the Dirac Medal of the World Association of Theoretical and Computational Chemists (2004), the Outstanding Young Scientist Award of the Israel Chemical Society (2000), and the 1997 Alumni Award (one prize in Chemistry every 5 years) of the Belgian-American Educational Foundation. Most recently he was awarded the 2008 Jack Wolgin Prize for Scientific Excellence by the Weizmann Institute of Science. He has published over 220 scientific papers in international scholarly journals and his publications have been cited over 8,000 times.

He is married to Wendy Gardner (a Chicagoland native he met while at NASA) by whom he has a daughter named Aviva. They share their home with a reverse-engineered rat terrier named Lily (adopted from the Rehovot SPCA) and their garden with a varying number of Mediterranean tortoises.

Dr. Martin's avocations include the science of music, music itself (classical, jazz, progressive rock, metal, electronic), all aspects of history, Jewish studies, and linguistics. A native speaker of Dutch, he speaks and writes English at mother tongue level and is fluent in Hebrew, as well as fairly fluent in French and German.

"Who is Who" style capsule bio

Born in Belgium in 1964. Dual citizen of Belgium and Israel. Married, one daughter. Dutch mother tongue; English at native speaker level; fluent in Hebrew; fairly fluent in French and German.

B.Sc. in Chemistry, Limburg University, 1985; M. Sc. in Chemistry, U. of Antwerp, 1987; Ph.D., U. of Antwerp, 1991, all with highest honors. Postdoctoral work at NASA Ames Research Center (Moffett Field, CA) under drs. T. J. Lee and P. R. Taylor, and at San Diego Supercomputer Center (part of UCSD) under prof. P. R. Taylor. Returned to Belgium 1993; Habilitation, U. of Antwerp, 1994. Tenured appointment with National Science Foundation of Belgium, 1995. Sabbatical with Prof. Chava Lifshitz at Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 1996. Immigrated to Israel under Law of Return, 3 July 1996. Assistant Professor at Weizmann Institute of Science 1996-2001; Associate Professor with tenure, October 2001-September 2005; Full Professor, October 2005-present; incumbent of the Lady Thatcher Professorial Chair of Chemistry, September 2004-present. Head of Computational Quantum Chemistry research group in the Department of Organic Chemistry at Weizmann. Sabbatical with Prof. George C. Schatz at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, July 2007-June 2008.

Author of over 200 published papers (primarily in Chemical Physics Letters, Journal of Chemical Physics, and Journal of Physical Chemistry A, as well as JACS) and several book chapters. Lifetime citation index: over 8,000.

Several awards, including Dirac Medal for "the outstanding computational chemist in the world under the age of 40" (WATOC, 2004); Wolgin Prize for Scientific Excellence (Weizmann Institute, 2008); Prize of the Scientific Council (Weizmann Institute, 2001); Outstanding Young Scientist Award (Israel Chemical Society, 2000); Yigal Allon Fellowship (Israel, 1996-1999), and Five-Yearly Prize in Chemistry of the Belgian-American Educational Foundation ("Fondation Universitaire/Universitaire Stichting", Belgium, 1997).

Extraprofessional interests: contemporary history, Jewish studies, music (classical, jazz, progressive rock, metal), linguistics.