Following World War II service, the Philadelphia native completed medical school at the University of Geneva in Switzerland.  Dr. Weissman interned at City Hospital in New York, completed his residence at Bellevue Hospital, and remained in New York City where he had a distinguished career as a neurologist.  Fred Weissman became a very special friend of the University of South Carolina and the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry.  Beginning in 1989, he established separate endowments to support the University's educational mission:  the Weissman Chair in Chemical Ecology; the David and Esther Berlinberg Distinguished Professorship in the Darla Moore School of Business; a faculty enrichment fund in the College of Liberal Arts in memory of a favorite philosophy professor, Dr. Josiah Morse; and in 1997, the Weissman Lectures in Chemistry.

Previous lecturers:

Dr. George W. Luther III, University of Delaware - 1997
Dr. Linda B. McGown, Duke University - 1998
Dr. M. Bonner Denton, University of Arizona - 1998
Dr. Joel M. Harris, University of Utah - 1999
Dr. James W. Jorgenson, UNC-Chapel Hill - 1999
Dr. Tuan Vo-Dinh, Oak Ridge National Laboratory - 2000
Dr. Ronald A. Hites, Indiana University - 2000
Dr. Rick Russo, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab - 2001
Dr. Joseph Lakowicz, University of Maryland School of Medicine - 2001
Dr. John Wright, University of Wisconsin - 2002
Dr. Alan G. Marshall, Florida State University - 2006
Dr. Isiah M. Warner, Louisiana State University - 2009
Dr. George W. Luther, III, University of Delware - 2010
Dr. Chris McKay, Science Division of NASA Ames- 2010
Dr. Richard Zare, Stanford University - 2014
Marc Edwards, Virginia Tech - 2016
Dimitris Vlassopoulos, University of Crete Heraklion, Crete Greece - 2020
Kirin Furst, George Mason University - 2020