John Christian Bailar, Jr. was born in Golden, Colorado in 1904 and received his degrees in chemistry from Colorado and Michigan. He became an instructor at the University of Illinois in 1928 and began a sixty-three year career in Illinois - Department of Chemistry. He became associate professor in 1930 and full professor in 1943. Although interested in organic isomerism as a graduate student, it was while teaching a general chemistry course that he realized that isomerism, the occurrence of different compounds with the same chemical composition, is a general phenomenon that could also exist...