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David M. Hanson received his doctoral level scientific training in Physical Chemistry at the California Institute of Technology with Professor G.W. Robinson. This period was followed by a one year tenure at the Technical University of Munich in Professor R.L. Mossbauer's group. He joined the Department of Chemistry at SUNY Stony Brook in September, 1969, and was promoted to the rank of Professor in 1978.
Professor Hanson's research activities have involved the spectroscopic properties of polyatomic molecules and molecular solids in the visible and ultraviolet regions of the spectrum. External electric fields have been combined with spectroscopic observations to obtain information about charge distributions in molecules and molecular aggregates and to study electronic energy transfer processes. Recent work has centered on electro-optical properties, principally nonphotochemical spectral hole burning and energy transfer and relaxation processes, of molecularly doped polymer films.
In 1980 - 81 he was awarded the Synchrotron Ultraviolet Radiation Facility Fellowship at the University of Maryland and the National Bureau of Standards (now NIST). The research associated with this fellowship was conducted in collaboration with T.E. Madey and R. Stockbauer. Synchrotron radiation was utilized to study the adsorption and desorption of simple molecules and molecular fragments on single crystal metal surfaces under ultrahigh vacuum conditions. The photon energy range from 15 to 75 eV was covered, and measurements were made of low energy electron diffraction, work function shifts, Auger electron spectra, photoelectron spectra, photon stimulated ion desorption spectra and kinetic energy distributions, and electron stimulated ion desorption angular distributions, kinetic energy distributions, and mass distributions by time of flight mass spectroscopy. Recently work along these lines has been extended to studies of gas phase molecules and to the soft x-ray region of the spectrum using facilities at the National Synchrotron Light Source, Brookhaven National Laboratory. New work is directed at elucidating soft x-ray induced photochemistry on surfaces and in solids.
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