University of Arizona

Top University of Arizona Discoveries:

Pima S-1Cotton was developed by Walker Bryan and standardized by Robert Peebles and has become the highest quality cotton.
The science of Dendrochronology (study of tree rings) was founded by A.E. Douglass and has been used to understand the history of the earth (climate changes, environmental issues, and major events like fires, volcano eruptions.)
Thomas Chapman discovered the Carbon in Pulp process for leaching gold from rock with cyanide solution. The process is used throughout the world.
Anticancer drugs Adriamycin, Mitoxntrone, and carboplatin were developed by Sydney Salmon, Dave Alberts and Bob Dorr. In addition the “selectide process” for identifying new drugs and therapies for treating cancer was developed by Victor Hruby, Evan Hersh, Fahad Al-Obeidi, Kit Lam, and Sydney Salmon and is now widely used. A team led by Sydney Salmon and Anne Hamburger developed human tumor cell cloning that allows researchers to test the effectiveness of different anti-cancer treatments against tumor cells before patients receive anti-cancer drugs.
Jack Copeland and his team performed the first successful bridge to heart transplantation using a total artificial heart.
Robert Volz designed the world’s first artificial wrist, a revolutionary design that was named one of the nation’s 10 most important hospital advances in 1976.
Roger Angel developed a technology for spin-casting mirrors that has enabled the production of the largest telescope mirrors every made.
The University of Arizona has been a leader in planetary exploration producing a unique infrared camera for NASA’s Space Infrared Telescope, cameras for the Cassini and Galileo missions to Jupiter and Saturn, the Mars Lander camera and the gamma ray spectrometer for the Mars Orbiter that discovered water on the surface of Mars.
Carl Marvel’s development of polybenzimidazole (PBI) marked the beginning of a new field in chemistry: heat-resistant organic polymers. These were originally developed for the NASA space program (eventually used on the Apollo Moon Mission) and are widely used in aerospace, industrial, automotive and household applications.  PBI is used as an organically safe alternative to asbestos in many items including fire-blocking layers in commercial aircraft, uses in friction products and brake pads in automobiles.
Roy Parker developed control of RNA degradation
Donald Huffman discovered a method for bulk manufacturing of Fullerenes.
Emil Haury excavated the Llano-Clovis site, which extended our knowledge of the ancient mammoth hunters into the American West.
Jay Quade discovered fossils in Ethiopia that proved hominids go back at least four million years.
Hsinchun Chen developed a data mining computer technique which is used nation wide to link law enforcement agencies data bases and has been useful solving high profile crimes such as the D.C. sniper.

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