Tanford earned a bachelor’s degree from NYU in 1943, worked on the Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge, Tenn., and in 1947 earned a Ph.D. in chemistry from Princeton. After postgraduate work at Harvard, he taught at the University of Iowa, and then went to Duke University in 1960. He was named a James B. Duke Distinguished Professor in 1970 and retired in 1988.
His research focused on the physical chemistry of protein molecules and he is known for his two groundbreaking textbooks, The Physical Chemistry of Macromolecules (1961) and The Hydrophobic Effect (1973). He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Among his honors were: a Guggenheim Fellowship, the von Humboldt Prize, the Merck Award for Molecular Biology, and an Eastman Professorship at Oxford.
After retiring in 1988, Tanford moved to England (where, from 1929 to 1939, he and his parents had been Jewish refugees from Germany). There he began a second career writing about the history of science.
Tanford is survived by his partner and colleague of 40 years, Dr. Jacqueline A. Reynolds; three children, including J. Alexander ’72; and two grandchildren. His marriage to Lucia L. Brown ended in divorce.
Graduate memorials are prepared by the APGA.