Michael Kasha: from photochemistry and flowers to spectroscopy and music.

A brilliant scientist and an outstanding personality who was one of the founders of modern photochemistry-Michael Kasha-is the subject of this Essay. Kasha's rule and the Kasha effect both bear his name, and he also discovered the chemical production of singlet molecular oxygen, and was a pioneer of excited-state proton transfer systems. Kasha combined his passion for chemistry and physics with that for music, photography, and botany.

Spectroscopic studies of inclusion complexes of methyl-p-dimethylaminobenzoate and its ortho derivative with α- and β-cyclodextrins.

The effects of α- and β-cyclodextrins (CDs) on the both emission modes (LE -locally excited and TICT -twisted intramolecular charge transfer) of the fluorescence spectrum of methyl-p-dimethylaminobenzoate (I) and its o-methoxy (II) derivative in aqueous solution have been investigated using steady-state and time-resolved fluorescence techniques. It is found that the intensity of both fluorescence bands increases with increasing concentration of α- and β-CD. The stoichiometries and equilibrium constants of the fluorophore-cyclodextrin inclusion complexes have been determined by steady-state fluorescence measurements.