Physical Chemistry

Kenneth S. Schmitz earned BAs in 1966 for Physics, Chemistry, and Mathematics from Greenville College in Greenville, Illinois. He earned his PhD in 1972 for Physical Chemistry and Biophysics from the University of Washington in Seattle. From 1972 to 1973, Dr. Schmitz was a National Institutes of Health Postdoctoral Associate in the Departments of Chemistry at the University of Washington and then Stanford University. Dr. Schmitz started his teaching career as Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida from 1973-1975. He then moved to the University of Missouri in Kansas City in 1975 where he was Assistant Professor of Chemistry until 1979, Associate Professor of Chemistry until 1986, and Professor of Chemistry until 2014. He is now Emeritus Professor of Physical Chemistry and Environmental Studies. Dr. Schmitz has won several awards/traineeships in his career including the National Science Foundation Summer Trainee, Department of Chemistry, University of Washington, Seattle in 1968 and 1969; Fellowship in the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science in 1997; and Fellowship in the Kyoto University Foundation in 1998. He organized the Gordon Research Conference in 1984, which continues to meet every other year under the name "Colloid, Macromolecular, and Polyelectrolyte Solutions." Dr. Schmitz has authored over 90 scientific publications in refereed journals, three books, an invited review article, and edited two more books. His areas of specialization include dynamic light scattering, statistical mechanics, computer simulations, and biophysics.