Formula for an Auspicious Future 

As a chemistry major at the junction of the ’60s and ’70s, John LaMattina ’71, P’03, studied during what he half-facetiously calls the “dark ages,” in terms of facilities for science. As a University trustee, the noted chemistry researcher and retired Pfizer Inc. executive now sees not only “excellent” facilities for science at his alma mater, but also “outstanding” faculty members and an auspicious future.

“I believe Boston College could become the preeminent Catholic university in science education,” he says.

To help further that prospect, John and Mary LaMattina have pledged $1 million to supplement the LaMattina Family Fellowship in Chemistry, which provides fellowships to doctoral students, preferably in synthetic organic chemistry.

John, a native of Brooklyn, New York, had received a tuition scholarship to attend Boston College. “So we’ve been looking for ways to pay that back,” he says. “I worked with Amir [Hoveyda, Vanderslice Millennium Professor of Chemistry and department chair] and we agreed fellowships to graduate students would be the best way.”

Support for graduate study will help secure the growing prominence of the chemistry program, which graduated 22 doctoral students in 2007—far more than in any other single field at the University. Ten years earlier, only seven students earned the same degree. Chemistry faculty members also received $5.6 million in externally sponsored research in 2006-07, compared to $3.8 million a decade before.

These successes have helped BC’s organic chemistry program place 18th in the most recent U.S. News rankings of graduate programs in chemistry (2007), while the overall department was ranked 50th.

John’s own career path mirrored the upward trajectory of BC’s chemistry program. After graduation, he received his doctorate from the University of New Hampshire and spent two years as a National Institutes of Health postdoctoral fellow at Princeton. He joined Pfizer in 1977 and held positions of increasing responsibility for Pfizer Central Research. He retired as senior vice president for worldwide development in 2007. He received the 1998 Boston College Alumni Award of Excellence in science.