CHEMISTRY MATTERS AT CEREMONY EDWARDS RESEARCHER HONORED.

Byline: Daily News

EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE - Dr. Karl O. Christe has been presented the American Chemical Society's 2003 Inorganic Chemistry Award.

Christe is a research chemist and senior staff adviser at the Air Force Research Laboratory's Edwards Research Site.

Christe's chemistry award was presented last month during the society's black-tie awards ceremony and banquet dinner in New Orleans.

He received it from the ACS's president-elect, Charles P. Casey, and Mike Willis, who represented award sponsor Aldrich Chemical.

ACS awards are designed to recognize individual accomplishments in diverse fields of chemistry.

Christe was nominated for the award based on his lifetime achievements in the field.

Described by his colleagues as an unusually creative, imaginative and highly skilled chemist, he has tackled some of the most difficult and challenging synthesis problems in chemistry.

He and his co-workers are best known for their discovery in 1999 of the N5+ cation.

This was the first demonstration in 110 years of a stable and energetic nitrogen species and only the second ever discovered.

The N3- anion, discovered in 1889, is the only other known stable polynitrogen species.

Its energy is used in applications such as automotive air bags.

The discovery of N5+ was recognized by Chemical and Engineering News magazine as one of the top five chemistry achievements of the year.

Since that time, Christe's group has found evidence of the existence of the ring-shaped N5- anion, a potential counterpart to the V-shaped

N5+ cation.

Christe's studies in this area were funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

Christe is also active as a research professor at the Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute of the University of Southern California with funding from the National Science Foundation, AFOSR, and DARPA.

Christe was also responsible, in 1986, for a process that was thought to be impossible: the preparation of elemental fluorine by chemical means. This chemical process had been attempted unsuccessfully by researchers for almost 200 years.

Christe has won numerous honors for his scientific work. He recently won the 2000 Prix Moissan.

Christe also won the 1986 ACS Award for Creative Work in Fluorine Chemistry. He has published more than 300 peer-reviewed papers and holds more than 60 patents.

Christe was born in Ulm, Germany, and earned his undergraduate and Ph.D. degrees from the Technical University of Stuttgart. His Ph.D. thesis work was accomplished in nine months, an early indication of his drive and determination. He immigrated to the United States in 1962 and has had a successful career in defense-oriented research, industry and academia.