Bob Moss retired from a 42-year teaching career to pursue his first love: a class of unusual molecules known as reactive intermediates, which are fundamental to organic chemistry. These ephemeral molecules, appearing ever so briefly during certain chemical reactions, may live for as little as one quadrillionth of a second.

Moss believes reactive intermediates are crucial to pathways through which scientists can create new and different materials – like new drugs for human health or coatings to protect our buildings and bridges. “To make such things,” he says, “we need a full understanding of the reactions that produce them and all the players involved.”

He has been on the trail of these elusive actors for nearly half a century, and in devoting his attention to them full time, he is closing a satisfying circle. Today Moss is pursuing his molecular romance using instruments and computing power that didn't exist when he first started down this track as a young graduate student.

“To decipher reactive intermediates cameras must be very, very fast,” he says. “It was only with the advent of lasers that we were able to generate pulses of light of a nanosecond or less – necessary if we are to illuminate and capture the fleeting spectral signatures of these compounds."

Moss, the former Louis P. Hammett Professor of Chemistry, made the decision two years ago to move to emeritus status and research professor. He now supervises three postdoctoral associates in his laboratory – down from the dozen postdocs and graduate students with whom he once worked.

“My lab trained 61 doctoral students and a comparable number of postdoctorals, many of whom have gone into the chemical industry in New Jersey; others occupy teaching positions in the U.S. and abroad,” Moss says.

But support for his research on reactive intermediates remains at a steady level. Moss has enjoyed uninterrupted support from the National Science Foundation since 1965 and has just been funded for another four years.

On the Rutgers faculty since 1964, Moss was recently recognized by the American Chemical Society with one of the four Arthur C. Cope Scholar Awards made this year for organic chemists in the over-50 category. He received $5,000 for any use as recognition of his scholarship and $40,000 for his research. The award is named in honor of Arthur C. Cope (1909-1966), a highly influential and successful organic chemist who chaired the Department of Chemistry at MIT.

Another of the pillars of Moss’s research has been the study of micelles: collections of molecules that can encapsulate other molecules like a Pac-Man. Micelles can be used to dissolve things that normally don't go into water. Soap, for example, consists of molecules that form micelles in water, envelope the grease or dirt, and then carry it away down the drain. Similarly, micelles can be used to pick up oil in a marine oil spill, Moss explains.  Another important application of micelles is in the delivery of drugs.

For 20 years, with the support of the U.S. Army Research Office, Moss’s micelle chemistry was geared toward decontaminating toxic chemical warfare agents, such as nerve gasses. Moss’s group made micelles that carried molecules capable of rapidly destroying the phosphates that comprise nerve agents. The objective was to produce a means to clean up areas that had been contaminated with these toxic weapons.

Moss says that at the beginning of this project, the research group had some questions about the morality of their mission. “The key point was that we were never involved in making nerve agents,” he says. “The Army and other military agencies did nasty work that we would not like to be involved in. But we felt comfortable trying to destroy these weapons.”