chemistry

Neil Donahue

Neil Donahue is a chemistry topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Neil Donahue rather than just read about it. In short: Neil McPherson Donahue is an American atmospheric chemist. He is the Thomas Lord Professor of Chemical Engineering, Chemistry, Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University and since 2013 has directed the school's Steinbrenner Institute for Environmental Education and Research.

Key takeaways

Neil Donahue belongs to chemistry; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Neil Donahue to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Neil Donahue from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Neil McPherson Donahue is an American atmospheric chemist. He is the Thomas Lord Professor of Chemical Engineering, Chemistry, Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University and since 2013 has directed the school's Steinbrenner Institute for Environmental Education and Research. His research has focused on the origin and transformations of very small organic particles, which play a critical role in climate change and human health. He is a highly cited researcher.

Early life and education Donahue is from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His father, Thomas Michael Donahue, was a prominent space scientist who taught at the University of Pittsburgh and later the University of Michigan. Donahue attended Brown University, where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in physics in 1985. At Brown, Donahue and his friends participated in environmental activism. He was one of five students to live in the newly-renovated 'Urban Environmental Lab', a project that investigated possibilities for more environmentally friendly living when it first opened in fall of 1983. Donahue attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for doctoral studies, graduating with a Ph.D. in meteorology in 1991.

Career Donahue completed postdoctoral work at Harvard University as a research scientist under James G. Anderson and began teaching at Carnegie Mellon in 2000. In 2005, he founded the Center for Atmospheric Particle Studies, which he directed until 2013. In 2011, he was admitted as a fellow to the American Geophysical union, for "pioneering contributions to our understanding of atmospheric organic chemistry with emphasis on the formation of organic particulate matter." In 2019, Donahue was elevated to the rank of University Professor, the highest faculty standing at Carnegie Mellon. In 2020, Donahue was announced as the first editor-in-chief of Environmental Science: Atmospheres.

Awards and honors 1985 — MIT Jule Charney Award 1985–1988 — NASA Graduate Student Researcher 1991–1993 — DOE Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow 2011 — Fellow, American Geophysical Union 2016 — Pittsburgh Award for Creative Advances in Environmental Science and Technology from the American Chemical Society. 2017 — Gustavus Esselen Award for Chemistry in the Public Interest from the American Chemical Society. 2019 — Jule Gregory Charney Lecture 2019 — Fellow, American Association for Aerosol Research (AAAR) 2021 — World's most highly cited researchers 2022 — David Sinclair award from the AAAR 2023 — American Chemical Society Award for Creative Advances in Environmental Science & Technology

References

External links Neil Donahue publications indexed by Google Scholar

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Neil Donahue

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Neil Donahue claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In chemistry, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Neil Donahue before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Neil Donahue ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Neil Donahue

In research: Neil Donahue appears in chemistry research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Neil Donahue in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Neil Donahue is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1963 births, 21st-century American chemists, Atmospheric chemists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Neil Donahue outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Neil Donahue in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Neil Donahue means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Neil Donahue out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Neil Donahue in simple terms?

Why does Neil Donahue matter?

Because it connects several chemistry ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Neil Donahue?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Neil Donahue.