Designed and run by graduate students, the Isabella and Jerome Karle Symposium serves as a venue for sharing exciting research taking place within the Department of Chemistry.

The Symposium is named for Isabella and Jerome Karle, distinguished graduates of the University of Michigan Department of Chemistry.

Both Isabella and Jerome Karle received their doctorates in physical chemistry from the University of Michigan. Isabella received her B.S., M.A., and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan before the age of 23. The two returned to the University of Michigan to become faculty members in the chemistry department before pursuing illustrious careers at the United States Naval Research Laboratory where they focused on the development and advancement of X-ray crystallography methods. Isabella and Jerome worked together to improve upon these methods needed to analyze and understand complex biomolecules. Though both contributed to solving this problem, only Jerome Karle was awarded, jointly with Herbert Hauptman, a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1985 “for their outstanding achievements in the development of direct methods for the determination of crystal structures”. Isabella and Jerome Karle’s contribution to chemistry can be felt around the world as laboratories perform X-ray crystallography experiments necessary to determine molecular structures.

The Karle Symposium was formerly known as the Victor Vaughan Symposium and PECRUM.