Lauri Vaska

Country of origin: Estonia

Lauri Vaska (born May 7, 1925, in Rakvere, Estonia) is an Estonian-born chemist who has made noteworthy contributions to organometallic chemistry. Vaska was educated at the Baltic University in Hamburg, Germany (1946) and subsequently at the Universität Göttingen (1946–1949) where he received his vordiplom (equivalent to the American B.S. degree). He pursued his Ph.D. in Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Texas in the United States (1952–1956). He was a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University (1956–1957) where he conducted research on magnetochemistry. In 1957 he took a position as Fellow at the Mellon Institute in Pittsburgh where he remained until 1964. During that time, the Mellon Institute housed a number of future chemical luminaries, include Paul Lauterbur and R. Bruce King. Vaska moved as an associate professor to Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York where, since 1990, he remains Professor Emeritus of Chemistry.

The rest of his story can be read at Wikipedia.