Gordon W. Gribble

Professor of Chemistry at Dartmouth College

Fall 1958 Graduate

        While at Lincoln, Gordon was a member of the swimming team for two years and the manager of the Football team for one year. But his achievements in later life were not in the athletic arena but rather in academia as one of the most prominent professors of chemistry in the country. After Lincoln, Gordon attended San Francisco City College, earning his A.A. in 1961 before transferring to the University of California at Berkeley where he earned his B.S. in 1963. Then it was on to the University of Oregon where he earned his Ph.D. in 1967. He continued his studies at UCLA as a National Cancer Institute postdoctoral fellow from 1967 to 1968.

        In 1968, he accepted a position as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Dartmouth College. In 1974, he became an Associate Professor of Chemistry, finally becoming a full Professor of Chemistry in 1980, a position he holds to this day. From 1988 until 1991, he chaired Dartmouth’s Chemistry Department. In 1997 he was awarded the Distinguished Teaching Award by that year’s senior class.

        Gordon has been a visiting professor at the University of Hawaii, the University of Waterloo, the University of California at Santa Cruz and the California Institute of Technology. During his teaching career, Gordon has supervised over one hundred teaching assistants as well as numerous doctoral candidates and postdoctoral research associates. Gordon has published 230 papers and review articles in the field of organic chemistry, focusing on the synthesis of biologically active natural products, new synthetic methodology, heterocyclic organic chemistry, chemopreventive triterpenoids and the isolation of natural products from marine and terrestrial sources. He has also refereed 160 research proposals for 17 agencies. For several years, he has had a special interest in the environmental aspects of naturally occurring organohalogen compounds and has written and lectured extensively on this topic.

        He has garnered numerous awards, literally too numerous to mention, including the National Institutes of Health Research Career Development Award, three Dartmouth Senior Faculty Fellowships, the National Science Foundation Professional Development Award and the American Cyanamid Academic Award. In 1998, he was awarded the Chemistry Alumni Award by the University of Oregon.

        Gordon has many interests outside of chemistry, including chess, scuba diving and winemaking. In these outside endeavors he excels as well. In 1987, he won the New Hampshire amateur chess championship. His wines have also won many state and national awards including a Best of Show at the 1998 Connecticut Amateur Winemaking Competition for his Cabernet Blackberry Port and another Best of Show at the American Wine Society competition for his 1995 Petite Syrah.

        In addition to these awards and in recognition of his many accomplishments, Gordon was inducted into the Abraham Lincoln High School Wall of Fame in May 2004.