Thomas C. Bruice (August 25, 1925 – February 15, 2019)[1] was a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at University of California, Santa Barbara.
at the University of Southern California, and returned there after his service as a Marine medical corpsman during the World War II island campaigns in the South Pacific, and obtained his Ph.D.
[4] In addition, he made important contributions to understanding enzyme catalysis, and he pioneered the use of imidazole-catalysed hydrolysis of p-nitrophenyl acetate as a model system.
[6] More generally, he made a study of mechanisms for chymotrypsin catalysis.,[7] and in particular the "charge-relay" system as a way of understanding the role of the catalytic triad that exists in such enzymes.
[14] Bruice collaborated with Stephen Benkovic to write a two-volume work on Bioorganic Mechanisms that helped establish this field.