Stuart Alan Rice  is an American theoretical chemist and physical chemist. He was born on  January 6, 1932 in New York City. After graduating from college he was active in local politics in Washington state, and worked for the Washington State Industrial Welfare Commission and the New York City Department of Public Charities. He received his PhD training in Sociology (1924) at Columbia University under Franklin Giddings, and taught at Dartmouth College (1923-26) and the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School from 1926 to 1933. Rice has served the university in a wide variety of capacities during his fifty-seven year tenure. He served as the director of the James Franck Institute from 1961 to 1967. He was Chairman of the Department of Chemistry from 1971 to 1976 and was Dean of the Physical Sciences Division from 1981 to 1995. He served as Dean for the Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago from October 2006 through October 2010, and has served as Interim President of the Institute since October 2010. He received the National Medal Of Science in 1999.