Richard T. Arnold, 87, an organic chemist known in the academic and corporate world for his skill at dissecting chemical curiosities and for encouraging younger scientists to do the same, died Tuesday, Jan. 16, in Evanston Hospital after a fall at his home last week. He had been a chemistry department chairman at Southern Illinois University and at the University of Minnesota and was the first program administrator of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, whose awards fund research by university faculty. He also had been a vice president and director of research at Mead Johnson and Co. and chairman of its scientific advisory board and later was chairman of the board of Organic Synthesis Inc. He was known for helping scientists in his charge–be they professors, students or corporate researchers–distill their thinking about tackling uncertainties in the chemical world. He received the American Chemical Society’s Award in Pure Chemistry in 1949 for his detailed explanations of chemical reactions. “He carried this to a level of precision and reliability which was unusual at the time,” said James Tyrrell, former chairman of the chemistry department at SIU. “He was extremely good at looking at a problem and saying `Here’s the key problem we should focus on.'” Mr. Arnold received a bachelor’s of education degree at SIU in 1934 and a master’s and PhD degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1935 and ’37. From 1937 to 1955, he taught at the University of Minnesota and was chairman of its chemistry department for nine years. Twice during that time he worked in Europe, once as a Guggenheim Fellow in Switzerland and later as scientific attache to the U.S. Embassy in Bonn. He was an administrator at the Sloan Foundation and a research executive at Mead Johnson before returning to SIU in 1970. He was a visiting professor at Northwestern University in 1975 and received an honorary doctorate there in 1979. He became professor emeritus in 1982 and has lived in Evanston since, most recently in the Mather Garden retirement home. Survivors include a daughter, Mary lyn Wonderlic; a son, Robert; four grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren. Services will be private.
