Accomplished chemistry professor remembered for brilliance, energy

Edward Stiefel, the renowned chemistry professor who helped lead the cleanup of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, died Sept. 4 in New Brunswick from pancreatic cancer. He was 64.

Stiefel joined the chemistry department in 2001 after working at Exxon-Mobil for over two decades.

As a researcher in both academia and industry, Stiefel helped advance and integrate the two fields. "[Stiefel's] genius was his ability to work from the global down to the molecular," said chemistry professor John Groves, who attended graduate school with Stiefel and taught a course with him at Princeton.

At the University, Stiefel co-taught the graduate course "Metals in Biology," one of the most popular in the chemistry department.

"Kids would pack into the classroom for the 'Metals' course, including a bunch of undergraduates," Kirsten Arentzen, the chemistry department undergraduate administrator, said.

People flocked to the class, she added, because of Stiefel's dedication to his material and concern for the students.

"The day before he gave a talk, he would practice giving that lecture as late as two to three in the morning to make sure that he could clearly get his message to his students," Arentzen said. "He connected to each student as an individual, and not just as a group of students."

Besides "Metals in Biology", Stiefel also taught the freshman seminar "Elements of Life," which explored the various factors needed to sustain and create life. Nathan Harbacek '07, who took the seminar with Stiefel, remembers it as one of the best classes he has taken. "Half the students in the seminar ended up majoring in chemistry," Harbacek said.

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Harbacek also remembers Stiefel as a caring, sensitive individual. "[Stiefel] was brilliantly insightful when it came to understanding what you were interested in, and honing that interest," he said. "He taught us as much about our selves as about the actual material."

When asked to describe Stiefel, Groves said he was most struck by Stiefel's enthusiasm. "[Stiefel] would engage anyone in lively discussion about all kinds of topics, involving various current events and how they relate to chemistry," he said.

Arentzen also remembered Stiefel's energy, describing how he would pace up and down a room with his trademark baseball cap and water bottle. "He was a treasure," she said.

A productive career

After earning his Ph.D. from Columbia in 1967, Stiefel spent more than a decade teaching and researching before joining Exxon as a research associate.

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During his time at the company, Stiefel rose through the ranks to become a senior scientific adviser and acquired 30 patents, including one for the "thiomolybdate" additive for lubricating oils. "Ed [Stiefel] was very proud of inventing the lubricant, which has the effect of making the oil more slippery and less prone to oxidize," Groves said.

Stiefel also advised the cleanup of the notorious Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska in 1989. "Ed [Stiefel] was one of the main people on that team who figured out that the microbes that can consume oil were already there, and that they just needed to spray fertilizer on the beaches," Groves said.

Though Stiefel made significant contributions to industrial and academic chemistry, he was always a teacher first, his wife Jeannette said. "He loved teaching and he loved his students."