CAS CONNECT 2017

26 A lthough he officially retired in 1996, Paul Devlin still spends the majority of his days in the lab, continuing an experimen- tal program that’s been funded by the National Science Foundation since the early ’60s. “The NSF has been good to me since 1962, and I don’t think things could’ve gone any better,” Devlin says. A professor emeritus of physical chemistry and chem- ical physics in Oklahoma State University’s Department of Chemistry, Devlin has the longest chain of continuous funding in his department — and he’s still not sure when he’ll completely call it quits. “I always look at the pres- ent NSF grant as the last one,” he says and laughs. “The first 16 years of retirement under the present program … most enjoyable I’ve ever had. “In the last few years, there have been some big life changes that have affected my outlook, but my own approach is that if my mind is adequate in a year, I’ll go back for another three years … but I’m not sure it’s going to work out that way for a couple reasons — my mind is number one, but number two is that federal funding of grants is dropping rapidly. We need to do something pretty spec- tacular if we’re going to go back in hopes of getting more funding.” From the early ’80s to about 2002, Devlin’s research centered on ice, specifically the nature of the surface of ice nanocrystals and the mobility of defective structures within ice and ice-related systems. After that, his focus shifted to gas hydrates, or clathrate hydrates, with a system based on two methods: catalysis — the acceleration of a solid state formation by a substance or catalyst — and an all-vapor approach to that formation, as gas hydrates are basically ice with small guest molecules encaged. What’s the importance of all this time spent on one project? In a nutshell, there’s been a long-term view that clathrates can be used in numerous ways, such as with technology, water purification, bulk transporta- tion of molecules and more. “One of the possible uses that’s been largely unreal- ized is in storing carbon diox- ide,” Devlin says. “Potentially, they’d be useful in attempts to control carbon dioxide concentrations in the world — that’s a very big subject. The problem hasn’t been anywhere near solved in regards to that use, but as of 10 years ago, we weren’t using a practical system.” Others agree that findings by Devlin and his associates along with more general prog- ress over the last few decades are critical and perhaps profound. Roughly 10 years ago, Devlin says standard prac- tice was to force gases, such as carbon dioxide or meth- ane, into the hydrates by using tremendous pressure — think 60 atmospheres of pressure for hours at a time — but then, something clicked. “What we found was a way to form these systems on a sub-second time-scale at atmo- spheric or lower pressures and moderately low temperatures,” he says. With so many years spent in the lab, Devlin has had the opportunity to work with many students, particularly graduate students, and he feels this might be the area he has the greatest impact. “Dr. Devlin is a high-qual- ity scientist and person,” says Brad Rowland, an assistant professor in OSU’s Chemical Engineering Department, who worked with Devlin as a grad- uate student in the ’90s. “He is a man who makes people question and think, whether talking about science or any other topic.” Through NSF fund- ing, along with advanced computational support acquired through a collabo- ration with the United States- Israel Binational Science In the Name of Science Retired OSU chemistry professor has yet to leave the lab By Shelby Holcomb