Robert E. (Bob) Buntrock

Minneapolis native, B.Chem. (62) from the Univ. of Minnesota, MS (64), PhD (67) from Princeton Univ. I was a lab chemist in pesticide synthesis at Air Products 1967-1970 and Amoco Oil 1970-71. In 1971, I joined the Information Services Division of Amoco Corp. in Naperville, performing chemical/technical literature and patent searches for all Amoco research in the Chicago area. After advancing to Senior Research Associate, I took early retirement in Jan. 1995. At that point, my wife Gloria and I formed Buntrock Associates, performing similar information services for a wide variety of customers. BA is still active but winding down, and Gloria has retired from Braille transcription (other than BA COO, her chief function in the business).

Based on my background in synthetic organic chemistry, my searching specialties have always been chemical structure, other chemical topics, toxicology, and formerly chemical engineering and technical business. Never a patent specialist, I do have extensive experience in searching patents, primarily for researchers, as part of a broad based portfolio of technical information. Intially working almost exclusively with printed resources, I helped create the online age from an active user's standpoint and have been on several user committees for various vendors, including CAS, Derwent, and ORBIT.

I've been an ACS member since 1962 with several Divisional, Sectional, and National activites and officerships. I'm a founding member of PIUG (Gang of 17?). Although I've only been to a few meetings (having previously turned over most of those duties to colleagues), I've remained active at least on a virtual basis.

As BA has wound down, I've devoted more time to giving presentations on careers in chemistry to both high school and college students, administering Chemistry Olympiad exams for the Maine Section ACS, and reviewing books for several organizations including CHOICE, JCIM, and PIUG.

After moving back to Minnesota in 1999, Gloria and I moved (one more time!) in 2004 to Orono, Maine where we're enjoying life in the same town as our grandchildren.