Dear Friends,

I contact you with a heavy heart about the passing of our dear colleague Charles Schmuttenmaer. I feel inadequate to summarize Charlie's outstanding contributions to optical physics, physical chemistry, and solid state physics. He pushed the boundaries of technology, innovated new techniques to address exciting questions, and established analytical methods to robustly examine data. Charlie actively contributed to the promotion of terahertz science. He frequently either chaired or helped organize conferences and workshops throughout the world. Charlie was eager to engage in discussions with students and young scientists, but his mentoring went beyond this. His insightful and patient comments have guided so many of us. He was a good friend. 

For those of you who did not get the chance to meet Prof. Schmuttenmaer, I have included a short bio from Yale¡¯s website: 

Charles A. Schmuttenmaer was born in Oak Park, Illinois in the USA. He received a B.S. degree in chemistry from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 1985, and a Ph.D. degree in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 1991. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Rochester. In 1994, he joined Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, where he is currently a Professor of Chemistry. He is a pioneer in development and applications of terahertz (THz) spectroscopy.  Prof. Schmuttenmaer is a member of the American Chemical Society, the American Physical Society, the Royal Society of Chemistry, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was inducted as a Fellow of the AAAS in 2015, a Fellow of the APS in 2016, and a Fellow of the RSC in 2019.

His current research interests include novel applications of time-resolved THz spectroscopy (TRTS) and THz time-domain spectroscopy (THz-TDS). In particular, he has exploited the unique features of TRTS to characterize the efficiency of electron injection in dye-sensitized photoelectrochemical cells (DSPECs), as well as transient photoconductivity in semiconductors, quantum dots, nanoparticles, and nanotubes. He is a founding member of the Yale Green Energy Consortium. A second major research area involves THz-TDS coupled with high level ab initio quantum chemical calculations to probe and understand the low-frequency collective vibrational modes in organic molecular crystals. A primary goal is to experimentally measure and theoretically compute the optical activity of these low-frequency modes. 

We miss him.

Andrea