Faculty Profiles

Professor Gerrity received a B.A. in Chemistry from Cornell College in 1977, and a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from Harvard University in 1982. He joined the Reed Faculty in 1987. Dan currently teaches all of the physical chemistry lecture and laboratory courses offered at Reed, and he participates in the teaching of the analytical chemistry course as well (during his first dozen years at the College, Dan was solely responsible for teaching all four of the 300-level chemistry courses required for the chemistry major at Reed — including all of the lab sections associated with these courses). He served as a member of the Committee of Examiners for the Graduate Record Exams Subject Test in Chemistry for eight years, was elected to the Executive Committee of the American Chemical Society’s Division of Physical Chemistry (serving from 1994-1997) as well as the Western Spectroscopy Association (serving from 1991-1994), and was Reed’s liaison for the Partners In Science Program for over fifteen years. Dan is an experimental physical chemist; his research utilizes the short bursts of extremely intense light produced by pulsed lasers to study chemical dynamics and the electronic structure of molecules. In addition to the hundreds of students he has had the pleasure to teach, Dan is most proud of his contributions to the construction of the Arthur Scott Chemistry Building (including helping to get financial support from the NSF and the Murdoch Foundation), raising funds for several major equipment purchases for the chemistry program, and helping to obtain College funding for over 50 student summer research positions in the sciences at Reed.

Chemistry Department webpage