IIN Remembers Mark Ratner

Mark A. Ratner, the Lawrence B. Dumas Distinguished University Professor Emeritus in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern University, passed away on May 10 at age 83.

Read the full obituary on Northwestern Now (Link).

Mark Ratner started asking a question that most people thought was almost philosophical at the time: could you replace the solid-state components of electronic devices with molecules, and what would happen if you did? That question opened up an entire field.

He always used to say, ‘if you can’t make things, you can’t study things,’ and that philosophy drove everything. People are still chasing the ideas that came out of his work, in quantum computing, in energy, in medicine. That’s what a lasting impact looks like, and he will be greatly missed. – IIN Director, Chad Mirkin