15 Faculty Hot Shots: Tobias Ritter

The door to office M314 in the Mallinckrodt Chemsitry lab is open. Through the doorway sits a large, smudgy whiteboard—just begging to be written on. And across from that whiteboard, behind a chic, silver-grey desk sits Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology Tobias Ritter.

Though Ritter has the difficult job of teaching the second half of the notoriously grueling Chem 20-Chem 30 sequence of organic chemistry, his Q ratings glow—a breathtaking 4.7 for fall 2007-2008.

“I take every single student as seriously as I do my colleagues,” Ritter says. “When I prepare to give a talk to my colleagues, I obviously prepare very well. I think it’s also very import to prepare very well for teaching.”

Charles Liu ’11, a premed who took Chem 30 rather than the more biologically-inclined Chem 17-Chem 27 track, speaks highly of Ritter. “He’s definitely one of the reasons I decided to take this course,” Liu says. “The course was very challenging, definitely the hardest course I’ve taken so far at Harvard,” he adds. “But it was very rewarding because it’s well taught.”

Students were particularly impressed by Ritter’s commitment to teaching. After the second midterms came in lower than he expected, Ritter began holding Saturday study group sessions. “He really didn’t want to water down the course,” Liu says. “He’d rather hold extra sessions and change how he was teaching than do that.”

“Professor Ritter is very clearly enthusiastic about the material and he does a great job of conveying that,” agrees classmate Sophie Cai ’11. “Most professors don’t want to teach on Saturdays.”

Ritter, though, seems equally impressed and inspired by his students. “It’s very exciting to see students progress from just simple chemical principles to advanced chemistry,” he says. “I think because I’m getting very excited about that, the students may too.”

Ritter is making a difference through his research as well. He sees his biggest accomplishment as elucidating the creation of carbon fluorine bonds from transition metals. He continues his work in transition metal-mediated transformations with the hope of having “an immediate impact on human health.” He explains, “There are certain problems in medical areas that may have their solutions in chemistry. One example of that is a very powerful imaging technology, PET. Positron emission tomography.” The technology is limited at a chemical level, creating a boundary for hospitals, and Ritter’s goal is to overcome this through scientific research.

Ritter may be better known, though, for his status as one of the Department’s hottest professors. One blog calls Ritter a contender for “Harvard’s Top Chemistry Hunk.” When asked about this particular title, Ritter—dressed in jeans and a pastel Tommy Hilfiger sweater—laughs and shakes his head in disbelief.

“People keep telling me that, but I just never...” Ritter starts over. “So some students told me and I looked on the Internet, and I couldn’t find anything.” He laughs again. “But obviously I didn’t look very hard.”

If there’s a fan base, Liu remains skeptical that it affects Ritter’s enrollment numbers. “With the difficulty of the course and the reputation of the course, the people that take it are really serious about chemistry,” he says.

Liu pauses and adds, “A lot of people think he looks like Anakin Skywalker. Not Hayden Christensen, though. Anakin Skywalker.”

But it’s Ritter’s teaching that leaves a lasting impression among his students, as Cai says, “I definitely learned a lot.”