Professor Robert M. Metzger has retired from the department, where he has served as a professor of Chemistry and Materials Science since 1986. He was born of Hungarian parents in Yokohama, Japan and educated in Merano, Italy, He received his B.S. in Chemistry from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1962, where he worked with Willard F. Libby.  He earned his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the California Institute of Technology in 1968 under the direction of Harden McConnell and was a post-doctoral associate at Stanford University.  He began his academic career as an assistant professor in the Chemistry Department of the University of Mississippi in 1971.  He rose through the ranks at Ole Miss, ending as the Coulter Professor of Chemistry. In 1986, he was recruited to join the Department of Chemistry at The University of Alabama.  His research interests encompassed single-crystal X-ray crystallography, electron paramagnetic resonance, Madelung energies of organic metals, organic and cuprate superconductors, magnetic materials, Langmuir-Blodgett films and unimolecular devices, He published more than 200 journal articles, edited five books, organized three international conferences, and wrote a graduate-level textbook, The Physical Chemist’s Toolbox. He directed the research of 14 Ph.D. students and one M.S. student. He has been a guest professor or researcher at the Universities of Heidelberg, Bordeaux, Copenhagen, Florence, Kyoto, Padua, Parma, Rennes, Vienna, Delft, and Dresden. Dr. Metzger was the recipient of the 1998 Blackmon-Moody Faculty Award at The University of Alabama.