Texas A&M’s Marcetta Darensbourg Recognized as Eminent Scholar for Her Pioneering Work in Chemistry

Texas A&M University Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and National Academy of Sciences member Dr. Marcetta Y. Darensbourg has been honored by the Texas A&M Aggie Women Network as the recipient of its 2024 Eminent Scholar Award.

Established in 2011 and jointly sponsored by the Aggie Women Network and Office of the President, the award honors extraordinary women faculty who serve as role models for all Aggie students through their records of outstanding recognizes extraordinary achievement in research, scholarship and service.

Darensbourg will be presented with her award, which includes a $4,000 cash gift and a plaque, at the Aggie Women Network Awards Luncheon, set for Friday, Nov. 1, from 12 to 2 p.m. in the Memorial Student Center Bethancourt Ballroom.

A native of Knox County, Kentucky, Darensbourg is an internationally respected expert in synthetic and mechanistic inorganic chemistry and member of the Texas A&M Department of Chemistry faculty since 1982. She earned her doctorate in inorganic chemistry at the University of Illinois in 1967 and held faculty appointments at Vassar College (1967-69), State University of New York, Buffalo (1969-71) and Tulane University (1971-82) prior to beginning her independent career at Texas A&M, where was appointed a distinguished professor of chemistry in 2010 and a Davidson Chair of Science in 2017. She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2017 and honored in 2018 as Texas A&M’s first-ever Southeastern Conference Professor of the Year. She is an inaugural fellow of the American Chemical Society (2009) as well as a fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (2014) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2011), one the country’s oldest and most prestigious honorary learned societies.

Described as a chief architect of modern bioinorganic chemistry, Darensbourg is a leader in the synthesis of abundant base metal, hydrogen-processing electrocatalysts with the potential to replace platinum in fuel cell electrodes. Although trained as an organometallic chemist with earlier research programs based on transition metals, she began exploring the organometallic-like biocatalysts within microorganisms of ancient origin for use in clean-energy initiatives more than two decades ago, helping to create a new branch of bioinorganic chemistry known as bioorganometallic chemistry and inspiring a generation of scientists in the process. Her current fundamental studies of nitric oxide in combination with iron also hold strong promise for multiple medicinal applications and related impacts.

“Transition metals in the center of the periodic table — most notably iron, cobalt and nickel — are available on Earth in minerals and within biology as single metals trapped in evolutionarily designed biomolecular binding sites such as in proteins,” Darensbourg said. “Just how they get naturally removed from minerals, transported and selectively taken up into those sites and for what purpose(s) they exist there is the ultimate inspiration for my research. The fundamental chemical characteristics of such molecules and mechanisms of their interchange has fueled my excitement for chemistry over a long and continuing research career.”

A pioneer in many areas of chemistry, Darensbourg became the first-ever female recipient in 1995 of the ACS Distinguished Service in the Advancement of Inorganic Chemistry Award, the society’s top annual honor for inorganic accomplishment. In addition, she has earned the ACS Chicago Section’s 2019 Willard Gibbs Medal, 2017 ACS Award in Organometallic Chemistry and 2013 Fred Basolo Medal for Outstanding Research in Inorganic Chemistry. Her many career honors also include Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society’s 2020 William Procter Prize for Scientific Achievement, the 1998 ACS Southwest Region Award and the 2011 Distinguished Scientist Award from the Texas A&M chapter of Sigma Xi.

To date, Darensbourg has authored more than 275 refereed papers, co-edited two specialty chemistry books and co-authored a freshman chemistry textbook — publications that collectively have been cited more than 17,000 times. In addition to teaching courses in organometallic and inorganic chemistry, she has directed the dissertations of more than 60 students during her four-decade Texas A&M career, including Dr. Kayla N. Green, a 2007 Texas A&M chemistry Ph.D. graduate and a professor of chemistry at Texas Christian University.

“In preparing for this letter, I kept going back to a picture of Marcetta on her website,” said Green in support of Darensbourg’s award nomination. “The books. Those books. If you look closely, they aren’t famous inorganic texts. They are her students’ dissertations. I think this picture represents Marcetta in all completeness. With all of the fantastic science and the discoveries that she has contributed, I personally felt that Marcetta’s goal was to use the science to make me the best scientist I could be and then fight for others to succeed. She thought better of me than I had ever thought possible of myself. And for this, I thank Marcetta and give her the highest recommendation for this award.”

As testament to that lifelong legacy, Darensbourg has received nearly every teaching and student mentoring award offered by the university, including Texas A&M Association of Former Students Distinguished Achievement Awards in three separate categories: Teaching (1986); Research (1995) and Graduate Mentoring (2012). In addition to giving plenary lectures at multiple prestigious international conferences, she is active in professional bodies, including the ACS, National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health and on advisory panels for the Petroleum Research Fund and National Academy of Sciences. She currently serves on the editorial boards for Inorganic Syntheses and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and is an active editor of the latter publication as well.

“I take profound pleasure in teaching; it is inextricably related to research,” Darensbourg said. “Research and teaching are symbiotic. To tell a good story about a molecule is what teaching in chemistry is all about. To parlay this story into a well-received publication really pumps us up.

“One can do little without a lot of enthusiasm.”

Darensbourg is the sixth all-time Eminent Scholar Award recipient from the College of Arts and Sciences, joining 2023 honoree and fellow Distinguished Professor of Chemistry Dr. Sherry J. Yennello; 2021 honoree and fellow Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, National Academy of Sciences member and SEC Professor of the Year Dr. Karen L. Wooley; 2020 honoree and Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences Dr. Jyotsna Vaid; 2013 honoree and Distinguished Professor of Biology Dr. Deborah Bell-Pedersen and 2012 inaugural winner and fellow Distinguished Professor of Chemistry Dr. Kim R. Dunbar among the 11 total Texas A&M faculty honored with the award since it was first presented in 2012.