Walter Thiel
Born March 7, 1949 in Treysa, Germany.
Professor of Chemistry and Director at the Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung at Mülheim, Germany.
Email:thiel@mpi-muelheim.mpg.de
WWW: external link
Alfried-Krupp-Förderpreis (1988); WATOC Schrödinger Medal (2002); Member of the Akademie Leopoldina (2007); Liebig Medal (2012).
Author of:
More than 440 research papers in chemistry and physics.
Important Contributions:
- Development of computational methods for large molecules, semiempirical theory (MNDO and its extensions, methods with orthogonalization corrections, semiempirical GUGACI for electronically excited states, analytic derivatives), combined quantum mechanical/molecular mechanical approaches (QM/MM coupling schemes, free-energy calculations), corresponding software development (MNDO99, ChemShell).
- Development and application of ab initio methods for accurate prediction of vibration-rotation spectra of small molecules.
- Application of computational methods for studying a large variety of chemical phenomena, including density functional calculations on homogeneous catalysis by transition metal compounds and QM/MM calculations on biocatalysis by enzymes.
An obituary can be found here.