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Bernard Fried and Joseph Sherma, professors emeriti of biology and chemistry, respectively, have edited the revised and expanded third edition of the Handbook of Thin-Layer Chromatography.
More than 40 of the world’s leading authorities in the field present chapters on the fundamentals, techniques, and instrumentation of thin-layer chromatography (TLC), a procedure for separating closely related compounds for analysis. Published by Marcel Dekker, Inc. in 2003, the 1,016-page volume highlights the latest procedures and applications of TLC to 19 important compound classes.
The Analyst, a journal focusing on cutting-edge analytical and bioanalytical science, calls the book “a vital asset to anyone interested in TLC, whether from a practical, theoretical, or instrumental stancesufficiently user-friendly to not deter the reader.”
The second edition of the Handbook of Thin-Layer Chromatography in 1996 was praised by International Journal of Environmental and Analytical Chemistry as “one of the best practical books in the field.” When the handbook was originally published, the scientific journal Chromatographia noted that “the wealth of practical detail can potentially save many hours of laboratory experimentation.”
Fried and Sherma are leading experts in TLC, authoring the book Thin-Layer Chromatography, which was published initially in 1982 by Dekker and expanded in four subsequent editions, the latest of which was in 1999. They also coedited a 1996 book for CRC Press, Inc., Practical Thin-Layer Chromatography: A Multidisciplinary Approach.
They have researched and applied TLC extensively as part of an overall research program involving scores of Lafayette students. Fried has published more than 450 articles, reviews, and books on the applications of TLC to biology and the biology, physiology, and biochemistry of parasites and gastropods. More than half of these publications have been coauthored with Lafayette students.
Sherma’s research at Lafayette and with a number of leading analytical chemistry laboratories has resulted in 500 research papers, books, and reviews, including collaborations with 141 different students as coauthors for 194 papers published in peer-reviewed journals.
Marquis Scholar Elizabeth Ponder ’04 (Collegeville, Pa.), for example, recipient of the nationally prestigious Goldwater Scholarship, conducted EXCEL Scholars research with the professors that resulted in a coauthored article published this February in the journal Parasitology Research. Ponder, who is majoring in biochemistry with a second, individualized major in cultural biomedicine, is one of just ten students in the nation selected for the Keck Graduate Institute’s Summer Undergraduate Research in Biotechnology and Bioengineering. The program is part of the National Science Foundation’s Research Experience for Undergraduates.
Ponder’s article cited two publications coauthored by Fried, Sherma, and two Lafayette students, including Trustee Scholarship recipient and EXCEL Scholar Stacey Wagner ’03 (Shavertown, Pa.), who graduated cum laude May 24 with honors in biochemistry. In less than two years, Wagner published three articles with Fried and Sherma, as well as two articles with Yvonne Gindt, assistant professor of chemistry. Wagner presented her research at the 17th annual National Conference on Undergraduate Research in Salt Lake City, Utah; the annual meeting of the American Chemical Society in Boston, Mass.; and the 18th Annual Conference on Raman Spectroscopy in Budapest, Hungary.
Another collaborator with Fried and Sherma, EXCEL Scholar Jessica Schneck ’04 (Walnutport, Pa.), was selected from a pool of graduate and undergraduate students to present her research June 8-11 at the 2003 American Chemical Society Middle Atlantic Regional Meeting at Princeton University. The biochemistry major’s presentation was part of the Student Award Symposium sponsored by the Chromatography Forum of the Delaware Valley.
Fried and Sherma have conducted much of their work with Lafayette students over the past decade through the College’s distinctive EXCEL Scholars program, in which students assist faculty with research while earning a stipend. Many of the more than 160 students who participate each year go on to publish papers in scholarly journals and/or present their research at conferences.
The success of their interdisciplinary collaboration was reported in 2001 in “Collaborative Research in Invertebrate Biology and Analytical Chemistry at Lafayette College,” an invited paper published in Chromatography: Journal of Separation and Detection Sciences.
Their research students have included Erin Muller ’01, named one of the top 100 college students in the nation by USA Today, which included her in its “2000 All-USA College Academic Team.”
In honor of their work together and with students, Sherma and Fried were the inaugural recipients of the Delta Upsilon Distinguished Mentoring and Teaching Award, established in 2000 by the alumni of the Lafayette chapter of Delta Upsilon fraternity on its 115th anniversary. The award recognizes members of the faculty for distinctive and extraordinary teaching through mentoring, which may include advising, undergraduate research, independent study, or any of the many one-on-one mentoring activities that take place in a student-centered learning environment. The professors also shared Lafayette’s Mary Louise Van Artsdalen Prize for outstanding scholarly achievement in 1989.
Listed in this year’s edition of Who’s Who in America, Fried is one of the world’s foremost experts in the field of parasitology. His research has led to important advances in the effort to conquer tropical diseases caused by parasitic flatworms. Of special note is his work on the disease schistosomiasis, which affects at least 200 million people, many in Third World countries.
The Discovery Channel featured Fried in a one-hour, prime time program about parasites. The importance of his contributions in the field of parasitology is reflected by the fact that three organisms have been named in his honor. In the latest instance, scientists at the University of Valencia, Spain, named Echinostoma friedi for him.
A number of Fried’s students have presented their research at annual meetings of the Pennsylvania Academy of Science, of which he is a past president and an honorary lifetime member.
Earlier this year, Fried led the Infectious Disease & Molecular Microbiology and Immunology Joint Seminar hosted by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Among many other professional memberships, he is past president of the New Jersey Society of Parasitology, past executive council member of the American Society of Parasitologists, former associate editor of the ASP Newsletter, life member of the International Society of Chemical Ecology, and on the editorial board of the Journal of Helminthology.
In addition to the Van Artsdalen Prize shared with Sherma, Fried has received Lafayette’s Thomas Roy and Lura Forrest Jones Lecture Award in 1967 and Superior Teaching Award in 1970 and 1979. His research has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, Clark Foundation, Research Corporation, and Burroughs Wellcome Fund.
He retired from teaching in May 2000 after 37 years as a member of the Lafayette faculty. That same month, the College dedicated the Bernard Fried Research Suite in Kunkel Hall in his honor. At the time of his retirement, he was Gideon R. Jr. and Alice L. Kreider Professor of Biology, serving as the first to hold that title since 1975.
Fried earned his Bachelor’s of Arts degree in biology from New York University in 1954, master’s in zoology from the University of New Hampshire in 1956, and doctorate in zoology (parasitology) from the University of Connecticut in 1961. After serving as a National Institutes of Health Postdoctoral Fellow with the department of biology at Emory University, he was appointed assistant professor of biology at Lafayette in 1963 and promoted to associate professor in 1969.
Sherma has spent much of his career advancing the fields of pesticide analysis and thin-layer chromatography. For 31 years, he has authored reviews of TLC for Analytical Chemistry, the world’s leading analytical chemistry journal, and numerous analytical chemistry manuals for the Food and Drug Administration, Environmental Protection Agency, and other federal agencies. He taught the first short course on pesticide analysis at the Center for Professional Advancement.
Sherma initiated a student research program in analytical science when he arrived at Lafayette in 1958, publishing his first student-coauthored research paper three years later. Since 1961, he has published at least one student-coauthored paper every year. In 1995, the American Chemical Society honored Sherma with the Award for Research at an Undergraduate Institution. He received a $20,000 grant from the Dreyfus Foundation’s Senior Scientist Mentor Program last year to continue his work with Lafayette students.
In addition to the Van Artsdalen Prize, Lafayette awarded Sherma the Thomas Roy and Lura Forrrest Jones Faculty Lecture Award in 1968 and the Jones Award for Superior Teaching in 1971. He also was honored with the 1979 Distinguished Alumnus Award by Upsala College and the E. Emmet Reid Award for Excellence in Teaching Chemistry by the American Chemical Society.
Sherma has been coeditor of the Journal of AOAC International for Pesticide and Industrial Chemical Residues and Trace Elements since 1981. He has been a member of the editorial boards of Journal of Planar Chromatography since 1988, Acta Chromatographica since 1996, Journal of Liquid Chromatography & Related Technologies since 1998, and Journal of Environmental Science and Health (Part B) since 1999.
Sherma earned a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry from Upsala College in 1955, where he graduated second in his class, and a doctorate in analytical chemistry from Rutgers University in 1958. He was promoted to assistant professor at Lafayette in 1959, associate professor in 1963, full professor in 1974, Charles A. Dana Professor of Chemistry in 1982, and Larkin Professor of Chemistry in 1991.