Dick Haugland was born in
Huron, South Dakota. His parents were Elizabeth M. (Steuber) Haugland and Nelvin E. Haugland. He has one sister, Barbara A. (Haugland) Felker, who lives in
Bloomington, Minnesota. Richard Haugland received all of his primary and secondary school education in
Faribault, Minnesota. He graduated number four in his high school class of 192 students in June 1961 and enrolled at
Hamline University in
St. Paul, Minnesota. At Hamline University he majored in
chemistry. He received a B.S. degree cum laude with distinction in chemistry in June 1965. In September 1965 Richard Haugland became a graduate student in the chemistry department of
Stanford University. His Ph.D. advisor was Dr.
Lubert Stryer, a prominent biophysicist. His research at Stanford was a combination of organic synthesis of novel fluorescent dyes and experimental proofs of the theory of
fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET), a physical effect that permits measurement of distances in the range of the size of proteins. Two classic papers resulted from this collaboration: 1. Stryer, L., Haugland, R.P. "Energy Transfer: A Spectroscopic Ruler." Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 58, 719–726 (1967). 2. Haugland, R.P., Yguerabide, J., Stryer, L. "Dependence of the Kinetics of Singlet-Singlet Energy Transfer on Spectral Overlap." Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 63, 23–30 (1969). Richard Haugland dropped out of graduate school from April 1967 to June 1968 to serve as a volunteer in the
Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) program (now called AmeriCorps VISTA). His service was in the
L’Anse–
Baraga area of the Upper Peninsula of
Michigan in an American Indian (
Chippewa/
Ojibwe) area. He completed his research at Stanford University in December 1968 and worked for eight months as a chemist at
Syntex in Palo Alto CA. He left Syntex and in December 1969 moved into an abandoned cabin at
Bad Medicine Lake near
Park Rapids, Minnesota. While in the cabin, he finished writing his Ph.D. thesis by the light of a kerosene lamp. He received his Ph.D. degree from Stanford University in June 1970. In March to June 1970 he was an unpaid volunteer at Pine Point Elementary School in Ponsford, Minnesota where he taught grades five and six. During the following school year and part of the subsequent school year he taught mathematics to the American Indian (Chippewa/Ojibwe) children in the school and developed basic mathematics instructional materials. In June 1972 he became a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Manuel Morales, a biophysicist in the Cardiovascular Research Institute (CVRI) at the
University of California, San Francisco. While there, he continued the synthesis of novel fluorescent dyes and did fluorescence-based studies of
contractile proteins. He met Dr. Rosaria P. Brivio, a biochemistry postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Manuel Morales at the CVRI and they were married on November 22, 1972. They have two children, Marina Elizabeth Haugland Martin, born August 29, 1975, who is a medical doctor now at Stanford University, and Alexander David Haugland, born October 20, 1976, who now lives in
Eugene, Oregon. Richard Haugland returned to be an assistant professor of chemistry at Hamline University from September 1975 to June 1978. While there, he taught organic chemistry and general chemistry. His previous professors while a Hamline University student (Drs. Olaf Runquist, Rodney Olson and Clifford Creswell) were now his colleagues. During his first year as a professor at Hamline University, Richard and Rosaria Haugland founded
Molecular Probes. Richard Haugland received an outstanding achievement award from Hamline University in 1998 and Richard and Rosaria Haugland each received honorary doctorates from Hamline University in June 2006. He died on October 5, 2016, from brain cancer in Thailand, where he resided. ==Molecular Probes==