William H. Fuchsman Papers, 1970-77, 1979-83, 1985-96, 2012, n.d. | Oberlin College Archives

Fuchsman, William H. (1941-)

William Herman Fuchsman was born June 2, 1941 in New York to a Charles Herman Fuchsman, chemist, and Edna Bass Fuchsman, a librarian. He received his BA, cum laude, at Harvard University in 1963, and a PhD from Johns Hopkins University in physiological chemistry in 1967. He married Barbara Allen, a graduate of Swarthmore College, in 1964. From 1967 to 1968 he was an assistant professor in the Chemistry Department at the University of South Florida. He was a Fellow in the Central Research Department of du Pont de Nemours and Company from 1968 to 1970.

In 1970, Fuchsman was appointed Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Oberlin College. His research specialty was the biochemistry of metals. He taught biochemistry, organic chemistry, and general chemistry. He was granted tenure in 1976. He served as chair of the Chemistry Department twice. He served on and at times chaired the Health Plan Board, the Winter Term Committee, the College Admissions Committee, and the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee. For several years he served as the informal director of a summer preorientation program for outstanding incoming potential science and mathematics majors who were first-generation college students, from groups underrepresented in higher education, and/or international students. He served many years as a premedical advisor.

On research status in 1977 to 1978, Fuchsman continued and extended his research on legume leghemoglobin. This work was done in Canberra, Australia. At Oberlin he assembled a well-equipped lab for porphyrin chemistry and published the results of his research on iron porphyrins and on biological nitrogen fixation in journals such as Biochemistry, Bioinorganic Chemistry, and Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications.

In 1981 Oberlin won a grant from the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation to purchase equipment for protein purification and research on hemoproteins under the direction of Professor Fuchsman. The equipment involved students in doing research on legume root hemoglobins associated with nitrogen fixation. Fuchsman’s research pertained to agriculture and indirectly to energy conservation. The legume hemoglobins under his research are essential to nitrogen fixation in agricultural legumes such as soybeans. Biological nitrogen fixation significantly decreases the need for energy-expensive nitrogen fertilizers.

Fuchsman’s professional associations included the American Chemical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the New York Academy of Sciences, and the British Chemical Society. He received the National Institutes of Health Predoctoral Traineeship, National Science Foundation Undergraduate Research Participation award, and the Society of the Sigma Xi. He was a member of the American Civil Liberties Union and the Association on American Indian Affairs.

Beginning in the late 1990s, Fuchsman participated in an Oberlin-area human rights organization, the Santa Elena Project of Accompaniment (SEPA), that funds human rights observers in Guatemala and supports education in two rural, indigenous (Mayan) villages in northwest Guatemala. Since 1999, SEPA arranged Winter Term group projects in rural Guatemala, and Fuchsman served as faculty sponsor for the projects. He traveled to Guatemala several times in connection with SEPA’s activities.

William Fuchsman retired from Oberlin College in 2013.

Author: Anne Cuyler Salsich

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