John Edwin Baldwin, 86, a resident at Foulkeways, in Gwynedd, Pennsylvania, died peacefully on May 26, 2024. Born on Sept. 10, 1937, in Berwyn, he grew up in Oak Park, attending Oak Park and River Forest High School, where he excelled in sports and was valedictorian of his 1955 graduating class.
Baldwin did his undergraduate studies at Dartmouth College, where he was an athlete on the football, lacrosse, track, and ski teams. He remained an avid runner and took pleasure in running with friends. He graduated as valedictorian of his class in 1959, then pursued his doctoral studies in chemistry and physics at California Institute of Technology, earning his PhD in 1963.
Deeply interested in his field of Physical Organic Chemistry he developed a reputation as a gifted and meticulous scholar, researcher, collaborator, legendary teacher and mentor. He began his career at the University of Illinois Urbana, then accepted an offer from the University of Oregon. During his sixteen-year tenure there, he also served five years as Dean of Arts and Sciences. John spent his final decades of teaching and research at Syracuse University, starting in 1984.
He served on the President’s Science Advisory Committee; the Medicinal Chemistry Study Section of the National Institutes of Health; the National Science Foundation’s Chemistry Division Standing Review Panel, the executive committee of the American Chemical Society Division of Organic Chemistry; and the Advisory Board of the Petroleum Research Fund of the American Chemical Society.
He read broadly, especially in history and philosophy, and studied many foreign languages including Russian, Swedish, and German. He embraced the professional and personal opportunity to travel and held visiting professor appointments at Heidelberg, Munich and Hamburg, Germany; Krakow, Poland; Stockholm and Göteborg, Sweden; and at his alma mater, Cal Tech.
He loved music and his research contributions were diverse and highly influential and his complex experiments were considered ambitious, elegant, and insightful: one mark of that work was his receipt of the American Chemical Society’s coveted James Flack Norris Award in 2010.
For almost 63 years he was the husband of Anne (Nordlander) Baldwin, also a resident at Foulkeways. He was the son of Francis M. Baldwin and Irville (Miller) Baldwin.
In addition to his wife, Anne, he is survived by his children, Claire Miller Baldwin (husband Ferdinand von Muench), John Nordlander Baldwin (late wife Daphne Berdahl-Baldwin), and Wesley Hale Baldwin (wife Melisa Barrick Baldwin); his grandchildren, Carrie von Muench (husband Shankara Anand), Sophie von Muench, Audrey Berdahl-Baldwin, Eloise Berdahl-Baldwin, Jack Baldwin, Ella Baldwin, Poppy Baldwin, and Maisie Baldwin; his sister, Martha Baldwin Swanson, and many nieces and nephews.
Services will be held privately.
In lieu of flowers, memorial donations may be made in John’s name to Dartmouth College at (calltolead.dartmouth.edu/ways-give) or to the American Friends Service Committee (afsc.org).
Condolences may be conveyed through huffandlakjer.com
