William Jolly

William (Bill) Lee Jolly of El Cerrito died Jan. 10. He was 86.

Jolly was born Dec. 27, 1927 in Chicago, Ill. He earned his bachelor's and master's degrees in chemistry at the University of Illinois, where he met his wife of 41 years, Frances Ann Adams Bartholomew Jolly. His college summers at Kodak in Rochester, N.Y., refined his keen focus on photography. Jolly married Frances in Berkeley in 1950, settling in El Cerrito where they raised three children.

In 1952 Jolly earned his doctorate degree at the University of California, in Berkeley and was appointed an instructor in the College of Chemistry. From 1952 to 1955 he headed the Physical Chemistry and Inorganic Chemistry Division at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where he helped devise compounds used in the testing of thermonuclear devices. Appointed a full faculty member in 1955, he later studied at Heidelberg, Germany as a Guggenheim Fellow.

Jolly's research at UC Berkeley, Lawrence Livermore and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory included thermodynamics, volatile hydrides, sulfur-nitrogen compounds, liquid ammonia solutions and atomic core binding energies. His extensive publishing included a history of the UCB College of Chemistry and two seminal works on inorganic chemistry; synthetic inorganic chemistry and the synthesis and characterization of inorganic compounds.

In 1984, he was elected a Fellow of the AAAS. Jolly's retirement in 1991 allowed him to be closer to his wife, who died of cancer in 1992. Jolly met Jane Vavra Weidringer at the Berkeley Camera Club; they married in 1994 and lived in El Cerrito.

A brilliant photographer and a member of the Berkeley Camera Club, Jolly was renowned for work on the "Sabatier effect" and invented spectacular printing techniques such as chromoskedasic solarization and silver mirror printing. His other passions included bridge (he achieved the ranking of Life Master) and the Sierra Nevada mountains. He took his family, colleagues and grad students backpacking and camping every summer to "the high country," a source for much of his photography. Jolly also was fond of California wines, bawdy limericks and his VW bugs.

Jolly is survived by his wife, Jane; sister, Jacqueline Getzin; children, Jeffrey, Steven and Jennifer Jolly; granddaughter, Breanna Jolly; and daughter-in-law, Kimberly Jolly. Per Jolly's wishes, there will be no memorial. A private interment ceremony was held at Sunset View Cemetery in El Cerrito, Calif.