Dudley R. Herschbach is an American chemist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1986, alongside Yuan T. Lee and John C. Polanyi, for their contributions to the dynamics of chemical elementary processes. Herschbach is particularly recognized for his work in the development of techniques to study chemical reactions at the molecular level, using crossed molecular beams, which has greatly advanced the field of chemical kinetics.
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Dudley R. Herschbach used molecular beams to investigate the dynamics of individual reactive collisions. Intersecting dilute beams and measuring product directions and speeds connects collision geometry with the forces acting during a chemical reaction.
The experiment separates microscopic dynamics from the many collisions present in a bulk gas. Herschbach's account describes apparatus design and the kinematic interpretation needed to turn detector signals into molecular information.[ref]
https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2018/06/herschbach-lecture.pdf. Nobel lecture: molecular-beam apparatus and collision dynamics
Portrait of Dudley R. Herschbach
. Markus Pössel (User Mapos). CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Source.