Bart Kahr Professor of Chemistry; Professor of Chemistry A.B., Middlebury College Ph.D., Princeton University, Postdoctoral Associate, Yale University Email: bart.kahr@nyu.edu Phone:  212-992-9579 Personal Homepage:  http://faculty.washington.edu/annkurth/ Lab Homepage:  http://www.nyu.edu/fas/dept/chemistry/kahrgroup/

Areas of Research/Interest: Chemical crystallography, interations of light and organized media, polycrystalline pattern formation, origin of life science, experimental history of science.

Research Description: Crystalline polyhedra are prototypical material objects; light is ethereal. Yet, there has been a surprising reciprocity between crystals and light. Polarization and photon entanglement are crystal-optical discoveries while light scattering has been unsurpassed in the characterization of crystals. We engage this dialogue through investigations of unusual crystalline materials that have informed crystal growth mechanisms and led to the design of new optical materials. Recently, we have focused on the interactions of light with organized polycrystals that occur in biopathological structures, high-polymers, molecular crystals, and simple salts; pattern formation is one of the great organizing principles common to all of the sciences. We develop polarization imaging methodologies for the study of complex aggregates and are especially interested in defining heterogeneities and anisotropies of chiroptical properties.

Select Publications:

1       W Kaminsky, B Kahr, S Powell, L-W Jin

         Polarimetric imaging of amyloid

         Micron, 2006, 37, 324-338        

 

2       K Claborn, J Herreros Cedres, C Isborn, A Zoulay, E Weckert, W Kaminsky, B Kahr

         Optical rotation of achiral pentaerythritol

         J Am Chem Soc. 2006, 128, 14746-14747

 

3       E Gunn, R Sours, W Kaminsky, B Kahr

         Mesoscale chiroptics of rhythmic precipitates

         J Am Chem Soc. 2006, 128, 14234-14235  

 

4       B Kahr, ed.

         Optically Anomalous Crystals.

         English language edition of Nauka publication by A. Shtukenberg and Y. Punin

         Springer Series in Solid State Science, 2007

 

5       T Bullard, J Freudenthal, S Avagyan, B Kahr

         Test of Cairns-Smith’s crystals-as-genes hypothesis

         Faraday Discussions, 2007, 136, 231-245

 

6       C Isborn, K Claborn, B Kahr

         The optical rotatory power of water

         J Phys Chem A, 2007, 111, 7800-7804

 

7       W Kaminsky, E Gunn, R Sours, B Kahr

         Simultaneous false-color imaging of birefringence, extinction, and transmittance at camera speed

         J Microscopy, 2007, 228, 153-164.

 

8       B. Kahr, K. Claborn

         The lives of Malus and his bicentennial law

         ChemPhysChem. 2008, 9, 43-58.

 

9       K Claborn, C Isborn, W Kaminsky, B Kahr

         Optical rotation of achiral compouds

         Angew Chem Int Ed Engl, 2008, 47, 5706-5717.

 

10     KL Wustholz, ED Bott, B Kahr, PJ Reid

         Memory and spectral diffusion in single-molecule emission

         J Phys Chem C, 2008, 112, 7877-7885.

 

11     JB Benedict, J Freudenthal, E Hollis, B Kahr

         Orientational dependence of linear dichroism exemplified in dyed spherulites

         J Am Chem Soc, 2008, 130, 10714-10719.

 

12     B Kahr, J Freudenthal, S Phillips, W Kaminsky

         Herapathite

         Science, 2009, 324,1407.

Fellowships/Honors: National Science Foundation Young Investigator, 1994; National Science Foundation Special Award for Creativity, 2007.