Robert Sanderson Mulliken, 7 June 1896 - 31 October 1986

Robert Sanderson Mulliken was born on 7 June 1896 in Newburyport, Rhode Island. His father, Samuel Parsons Mulliken, was a Professor of Organic Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to which he would travel a distance of some 30 miles every day on the Boston and Maine Railroad. Samuel’s income was modest, and the family had little contact with the more influential members of the community. “This may account”, says Robert in his autobiography (B 250)*, “for a deep-seated inferiority complex which I have had, especially toward people in authority, but not towards prominent scientists”. He recalls helping his father proofread his four-volume treatiseA method for the identification of pure organic compounds '. “It is natural”, says Robert loyally, “that I became interested in science although I was strongly tempted to move in other directions, such as philosophy or other humanistic fields”. His mother Katherine W. Mulliken (a distant cousin of his father) formed a stronger bond with her son. She was a member of the Unitarian Church, and frequently took Robert along with her. She failed to persuade him to learn the piano, but succeeded in imbuing him with a sense of justice and of the beauty of nature. “I have sometimes experienced very strong feelings of intimacy with nature”, he writes (B 250) “but not of beauty in its laws”. His upbringing was strict and conventional and one gains the impression of an extremely well-behaved but rather shy child. He writes with lurking admiration about a red-haired classmate at the Jackman Grammar School, who became famous for his unconventional exploits and is quoted (B 250) as saying “my worst trouble is that I got my lessons done too quick”. Bossy Gillis, as he was called, rose rapidly in the community and was eventually elected mayor of Newburyport. Half a century later Robert Mulliken was invited back to Newburyport by another mayor, to have a street named after him.