John C. Light

Born November 24, 1934 in Mount Vernon, New York, USA.

Professor of Chemistry, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.

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NSF Fellow, Universite Libre de Bruxelles; Sloan Foundation Fellow; Fellow, American Physical Society; Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Author of:

Important Contributions:

• Phase Space theory of Chemical Reactions: A quantum or classical statistical limit of chemical reactions based on asymptotic densities of states with conservation of energy and angular momentum. A limiting case, perhaps valid for complex reactions.
• Theoretical methods of quantum dynamics: Exponential (Magnus) expansion of the time evolution operator; Unitary time evolution via Iterative Lanczos propagators; R-matrix propagation for solution of close coupled quantum scattering equations, Direct methods for resonances and Siegert parameters; Basis Representations for nuclear dynamics [Discrete variable representations, Distributed Gaussian basis representations, Sequential diagonalization/truncation (adiabatic/sudden bases)] Applications to photodissociation, chemical reactions, vibration/rotation spectroscopy of polyatomic molecules, surface scattering.