Caltech Mourns the Passing of Nobel Laureate Rudy Marcus (1923–2026)

Caltech News reports that Rudolph "Rudy" Marcus, the Nobel Prize-winning chemist behind the theory of electron transfer, has died at the age of one hundred two, five days short of his one hundred third birthday. Marcus won the 1992 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for explaining how electrons move between molecules in chemical reactions, work that Caltech says underpins everything from the slow spread of rust to the rapid reactions of photosynthesis. According to the university, he spent forty-eight years at Caltech, authored more than five hundred publications across nearly eight decades, and kept an active research laboratory running until his death. Caltech's president called him a visionary scientist whose foundational work continues to shape advances in clean energy, catalysis, and electronics.

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