In 1965, he joined the faculty of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, where he rose through the ranks and in 1991 became Clare Hamilton Hall Professor of Chemistry.
In 2010, he retired after 45 years at Northwestern and moved to Trinity University in San Antonio to assume his current position as Research Professor of Chemistry.
[1] [2] In 1973, Lambert was a Guggenheim Fellow[3] at the Research Laboratory of the British Museum, and, in 1976, he received the National Fresenius Award.
[5] His major scientific contributions include the creation of the first silyl cation (the silicon analogue of the carbocation), elucidation of the mechanism of beta-silyl stabilization of carbocations, discovery of inductive enhancement of solvolytic participation, creation of new methods of conformational analysis by nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (the R value), understanding the conformations of cyclic molecules containing heteroatoms, and development of chemical methods to examine archaeological materials.
[6] Nuclear Magnetic Resonance: An Introduction to Principles, Applications, and Experimental Methods, second edition, Wiley, 2019; Chinese transl., 2021 A Chemical Life, De Rigueur Press, 2014 Organic Structural Spectroscopy, second edition, Pearson, 2011; German transl, 2012; Korean transl., 2013 Nuclear Magnetic Resonance: An Introduction to Principles, Applications, and Experimental Methods, Prentice Hall, 2004 Organic Structural Spectroscopy, Prentice Hall, 1998 Traces of the Past: Unraveling the Secrets of Archaeology through Chemistry', Addison-Wesley/Perseus, 1997 Prehistoric Human Bone: Archaeology at the Molecular Level, Springer-Verlag, 1993 Acyclic Organonitrogen Stereodynamics, VCH, 1992 Cyclic Organonitrogen Stereodynamics, VCH, 1992 Recent Progress in Organic NMR Spectroscopy, UNICAMP Press (Brazil) and Norell Press (USA), 1987 Introduction to Organic Spectroscopy, Macmillan, 1987 Archaeological Chemistry III, American Chemical Society, 1984 The Multinuclear Approach to NMR Spectroscopy, D. Reidel, 1983 Physical Organic Chemistry through Solved Problems, Holden Day, 1978; Chinese transl., 1988 Organic Structural Analysis, Macmillan, 1976; Japanese transl., 1979 [1] [7] [8] Lambert has been married since 1967 to Mary Wakefield Pulliam Lambert, who received a PhD from Northwestern University in 1970 and was a research associate from 1981 to 2009 at the same institution.