Chemist Giacinto Scoles, 'a superb scientist and an even better human being,' dies at 89

Physical chemist Giacinto Scoles, Princeton’s Donner Professor of Science, Emeritus, died in Sassenheim, the Netherlands, on Sept. 25 with his wife of nearly 60 years at his side. He was 89.

“Giacinto was a superb scientist and an even better human being,” said Salvatore Torquato, Princeton’s Lewis Bernard Professor of Natural Sciences and professor of chemistry and the Princeton Materials Institute. “A smile forms on my face recalling the inimitable passion and excited gesticulations he brought to any scientific discussion. He was a force of nature and will be greatly missed by his family, friends and colleagues.”

“Giacinto had the creativity to find important problems that he could make significant progress on,” said Kevin Lehmann, a professor of chemistry at Princeton from 1985 to 2005 who published 56 joint papers with Scoles and is now at the University of Virginia. “He was always a leader in opening new scientific areas and never one to jump on something because it was popular or because it was well-funded. I learned by studying his career that choice of problems is far more important in making an important scientific impact than other skills, such as the mathematical and analytical skills that are my own strengths.”

Throughout his career, Scoles straddled the fields of chemistry and physics, a charismatic and influential force in both. He made pioneering contributions to the study of intermolecular forces, molecule-surface interactions, and surface monolayers. His broad knowledge of molecular beam technology led to his role in the conception and development of an innovative machine called the cryogenic bolometer, a universal detector of atomic and molecular beams that Scoles later used to detect the kinetic and internal energy of molecular beams.

Described by colleagues as both a generous and a demanding scholar, Scoles was also known as “an excellent role model for what any scientist should try to become,” according to a special 2007 tribute published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry A. 

Colleagues and friends around the world

Scoles’ scholarly career spanned six decades across four countries, including Italy, Canada, the United States and the Netherlands.

“I knew him before he came to Princeton, when he was in Italy. He was a great colleague and friend and was instrumental in bringing me to Princeton,” said Roberto Car, the Ralph W. *31 Dornte Professor in Chemistry. “He was a great experimentalist and a pioneer of molecular beam techniques, and he made some very important progress in a technique with clusters of helium at very, very low temperatures” that led to his winning the prestigious Franklin Medal in Physics in 2006.

“He was a great person,” Car said. “He was an excellent colleague and a very important person to me.”

Scoles advised Annabella Selloni, now Princeton’s David B. Jones Professor of Chemistry, as she began her career at Princeton. “He was positive and helpful, almost fatherly I would say,” Selloni said. “My research with him focused on the structure of self-assembled molecular overlayers on metal surfaces, primarily on gold. Giacinto did the experimental work and had a deep understanding of the physical systems; I did the calculations and tried to learn from him.”

“My father enjoyed sparking everyone’s enthusiasm for science and took every opportunity to do so,” said his daughter, Gigi Scoles. During a visit during her childhood to her science class at the John Witherspoon Middle School in Princeton, “he dipped a red rose into a thermos of liquid nitrogen and then tapped it on the desk at the front of the classroom, shattering it into little pieces that scattered in every direction. My classmate, Bebe Telfair (née Elisabeth Schmierer) would recall that event as a ‘core memory’ some 35 years later, so it seems he succeeded in exciting young minds about science.”

His daughter also remembered him organizing nanotechnology summer schools in Africa. “He believed in access to education for all, especially for women and people from developing countries,” she said.

Lehmann, now the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Chemistry at the University of Virginia, called Scoles “a very close personal friend, one of the closest in my entire life.” 

After his death, Lehmann and five of Scoles’ former students sent a memorial letter to colleagues. “Having worked with him meant a lifelong relationship, well beyond the submission of a thesis or the move to a different job or university,” they wrote. “He held himself and others to the highest intellectual and ethical standards yet had deep empathy for others. He always demanded excellence from his students, but all recognized that he deeply cared for them, not only as scientists, but also as individuals.” 

Born in Torino, Italy on April 2, 1935, Scoles was the son of a mechanical engineer who worked for the carmaker Fiat. He spent his early childhood in a village outside Venice. He earned his chemistry degrees from the University of Genoa, then began his academic career there. He organized and spearheaded the establishment of the experimental physics laboratory at the University of Trento in Italy; he was a cofounder of the Guelph-Waterloo Center for Graduate Work in Chemistry; and he played a leading role in establishing the Princeton Materials Institute upon his 1987 appointment at Princeton.

Among his awards and accolades, Scoles was elected Fellow to The Royal Society of the United Kingdom in 1997; he was an elected foreign member of the Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences of the Netherlands; he held two honorary doctorates (one in physics and one in science); and he was awarded the 2002 Peter Debye Award in Physical Chemistry and the 2003 Earle K. Plyler Prize in Molecular Spectroscopy.

Scoles transferred to emeritus status in July 2008, after which he held a professorship at the International School for Advanced Studies in Trieste, Italy, in conjunction with the Elettra Synchrotron Laboratories.

Scoles is survived by his wife of six decades, Giok Lan Scoles, and their daughter Gigi Mei Lan Scoles, who is currently serving overseas at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City. The family asks that contributions in his memory be made to an organization devoted to finding a cure to Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, (PSP): CurePSP at 325 Hudson St., Floor 4, New York, NY 10013. “I can think of no better way to honor my dad’s memory than to further scientific research on the disease that slowly made his body betray his brilliant scientific mind,” said Gigi Scoles.

View or share comments on a memorial page intended to honor Scoles’ life and legacy.