News

• Professor Rudolf Zahradník, a member of the IAQMS, passed away on October 31 2020.
  
• The 2020 IAQMS medalist Francesco Evangelista from Emory University, Atlanta, USA was elected following a video meeting held on June 27.
  
• Professor Werner Kutzelnigg, a member of the IAQMS, passed away on November 24, 2019.
  
• Professor Walter Thiel, a member of the IAQMS, passed away on August 23, 2019.
  
• The 2019 annual meeting of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science was held in Menton, France, on July 6 and 7.
  1. The following five people were elected as new members of the Academy:

     Tucker Carrington (Queens University, Canada)
     Laura Gagliardi (University of Minnesota, USA)
     Péter Szalay (ELTE Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary)
     Birgitta Whaley (University of California, Berkeley, USA)
     Takeshi Yanai (Nagoya University, Japan)
     

  2. The Annual Medal of the Academy for the year 2019 is awarded to Julien Toulouse (Sorbonne University, France). The citation to accompany the medal is "For his deep and original contributions to the development of electron-correlation methods at the interface of wave-function theory (WFT) and density-functional theory (DFT), with important contributions to range-separated DFT, double-hybrid DFT, and the diffusion Monte Carlo (DMC) method".
• The 16th ICQC-2018 was held at Le Palais de I'Europe in Menton, France on Monday 18 June till Saturday 23 June, along with two Satellite Meetings.
  
• The 2018 annual meeting of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science was held in Menton, France, on June 17 and 18.
  1. The following four people were elected as new members of the Academy:

     Leticia González (U. Vienna, Austria)
     Peter Knowles (Cardiff U., UK)
     Piotr Piecuch (Michigan State U., USA)
     Lucas Visscher (VU U., Netherlands)
     

  2. The Annual Medal of the Academy for the year 2018 is awarded to Dominika Zgid (U. Michigan, USA). The citation to accompany the medal is "For the development of self-consistent Green's function and self-energy embedding theory for strongly correlated systems".
• Professor George G. Hall, a member of the IAQMS, passed away on May 6, 2018.
  
• Professor Keiji Morokuma, one of the giants of quantum chemistry and a long-term towering figure in the IAQMS, passed away on November 27, 2017 due to heart failure. His innovative contributions, cheerful enthusiasm, and wise advice will be sorely missed.
  
  The family is not accepting condolences, gifts, or donations.
  
• The 2017 annual meeting of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science was held in Menton, France, on July 1 and 2.
  1. The following four people were elected as new members of the Academy:

     Kieron Burke (University of California, Irvine, USA)
     Shuhua Li (Nanjing University, China)
     Todd J. Martinez (Stanford University, USA)
     Christian Ochsenfeld (University of Munich (LMU), Germany)

  2. The Annual Medal of the Academy for the year 2017 is awarded to Toru Shiozaki (Northwestern University, USA) and Troy Von Voorhis (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA).
     The citation to accompany the medal is "For his contributions to multireference and relativistic electron correlation theories, and the development of the active space decomposition approach, which have significantly extended the applicability of wave function approaches." for Toru Shiozaki and "For the development of new theories and algorithms, including constrained density functional theory and van der Waals functionals, which have expanded the impact of quantum chemistry" for Troy Van Voorhis.
  Photo:
  
  Click the photo for larger one.
• Professor Robert Parr, a giant in our field and one of the founders of the IAQMS, passed away on March 27 at the age of 95.
  Jane Parr's address is here:
  Jane Parr
  700 Carolina Meadows, Apt. 210
  Chapel Hill, NC 27517
  
• Prof. Emeritus John Light, one of the first scientists to describe the dynamics of chemical reactions on a molecular scale and longtime editor of the Journal of Chemical Physics, died Jan. 18, 2016 at the age of 81.
  
• The IAQMS celebrates its 50-Year Anniversary with Science and History Session, open to the general public, on June 30, 2017 in downtown Menton. The program is here.
     If you wish to attend this session, please go to registration page and fill in your information there.
     IAQMS Members, please go to For Members Only page, and register for the 50th Anniversary 2017 closed and open parts of the annual meeting.
• Reinhart Ahlrichs, Professor of University of Karlsruhe, passed away on Oct. 12, 2016 at the age of 76. Here is the obituary: PDF
• Peter Pulay is the 2017 winner of the ACS Award in Theoretical Chemistry, sponsored by the ACS Division of Physical Chemistry. He will be honored at the Awards Ceremony on Tuesday, April 4, 2017, in conjunction with the 253rd ACS National Meeting in San Francisco.
• The 2016 annual meeting of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science was held in Menton, France, on July 2 and 3.
  1. The following five people were elected as new members of the Academy:

     Ali Alavi (Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research, Stuttgart & University of Cambridge, UK)
     Jiali Gao (University of Minnesota, USA and Jilin University, China)
     Marcel Nooijen (University of Waterloo, Canada)
     Julia Rice (IBM Research Laboratory, USA)
     Trond Saue (Université Paul Sabatier, Toulouse)

  2. No annual IAQMS medal has been awarded this year.
  Photo:


Click the photo for larger one.
• On June, 15th 2016, Vincenzo Barone has been appointed as Director of the Scuola Normale Superiore, the most prestigious italian University, for the period 2016-2020, starting from November, 1st 2016. (24 Jun. 2016)
• David Clary has been knighted by the Queen Elizabeth II for his services to international science. The citation for the Knighthood emphasises Sir David's leadership of Magdalen College Oxford, his research on the quantum theory of chemical reactions and his contributions as the first Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office. (14 Jun. 2016)
• A very distinguished member of the IAQMS and a Nobel Prize winner, Prof. Walter Kohn, passed away late at night on April 19, 2016. Here are the news notices: External link1 and External link2.
• The International Academy of Quantum Molecular Sciences congratulates Martin Karplus (Univ. of Strasbourg and Harvard Univ.), Michael Levitt (Stanford Univ.), and Arieh Warshel (Univ. of Southern California) on winning the 2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work on Multiscale Models for Complex Chemical Systems.
  Josef Michl
  President
  
• Obituaries of the deceased IAQMS members were added at the bottom of these members' pages. The obituaries linking to the external web sites were collected by Prof. David Clary.
• David P. Craig, Emeritus Professor at the Australian National University, passed away on 1 July 2015 at the age of 95.
• The 52^nd meeting of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science was held in Beijing on June 6–7, 2015.
  1. The following six people were elected as new members of the Academy:

     Thom Dunning (University of Washington, USA)
     Peter Gill (Australian National University, Australia)
     Anna Krylov (University of Southern California, USA)
     Ursula Röthlisberger (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland)
     Sason Shaik (Hebrew University, Israel)
     Arieh Warshel (University of Southern California, USA)
     

  2. The Medal for 2015 was awarded to Katarzyna Pernal (Lodz University of Technology, Poland). The citation to accompany the medal is "For her outstanding contribution to the density matrix functional theory."
  3. Photo:
  
  
  Click the photo for larger one.
• Prof. Alexander Dalgarno passed away on 9 April 2015 at the age of 87. Here is the news notice: external link1, external link2
  
• Stefan Grimme received a Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Preis 2015. This Leibniz Preis is the highest endowed research prize in Germany. It consists of a research grant of 2.5 million Euros, awarded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation) to exceptional scientists and academics in Germany for their outstanding achievement in the field of research - all fields are considered. The awarding ceremony was in Berlin on March 3, 2015.
• We are sorry to have to post sad news about one of our distinguished members: Professor Tom Ziegler of the University of Calgary suddenly passed away while visiting Bonn, Germany. An obituary will be placed on the IAQMS web page soon.
  
  The address for sending cards and condolences to Liv Pedersen (wife of Tom Ziegler) and his family is
  Ziegler Family
  c/o Sarah Boschman
  Administrative Assistant
  Department of Chemistry, SA 229
  University of Calgary
  2500 University Drive NW
  Calgary, ABT2N 1N4
  
• Harden M. McConnell, Stanford professor emeritus of chemistry, died on October 8, 2014 at the age of 87. He was one of the leading physical and biophysical chemists of the last half-century, contributing pioneering approaches and incisive results in diverse areas ranging from fundamentals of magnetic resonance to cell membrane biophysics and immunology. Here is the news notice: external link.
  
• The Rutherford Medal of the Royal Society of New Zealand was awarded to Peter Schwerdtfeger for his contributions to fundamental aspects of chemical and physical phenomena in atoms, molecules and condensed matter. For details see external link.
• Prof. Paul von Ragué Schleyer, passed away on November 20, 2014 at the age of 84. He was a giant in both experimental and computational physical organic/main group chemistry, and his passing marks an end of an era.
  
• Prof. Michael Kasha of Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida, USA, passed away on June 12th, 2013 at the age of 92. He was largely responsible for the general recognition that the metastable excited state of organic molecules is a triplet. He is also known for his applications of exciton theory to molecular systems and for the Kasha rule in organic photophysics.
• The 51^st meeting of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science was held in Menton on July 5–6, 2014.
  1. The following eight people were elected as new members of the Academy:

     Millard H. Alexander (University of Maryland, USA)
     Ria Broer-Braam (University of Groningen, The Netherlands)
     Garnet Kin-Lic Chan (Princeton University, USA)
     Sharon Hammes-Schiffer (University of Illinois, USA)
     So Hirata (University of Illinois, USA)
     Wenjian Liu (Peking University, China)
     Benedetta Mennucci (University of Pisa, Italy)
     Jozef Noga (Comenius University, Slovakia)
     

  2. The Medal for 2014 was awarded to Edward F. Valeev (Virginia Tech, USA). The citation to accompany the medal is "Development of robust and practical methods for the inclusion of explicit R12/F12 effects in electronic structure calculations to address the basis set error in high-level correlation methods."
  3. Photo:
  
  
  Click the photo above for larger one.
• Odile Eisenstein has been elected to the French Academie des Sciences.
• The 16th ICQC-2018 will be held at Le Palais de I'Europe in Menton on Monday 18 June till Saturday 23 June, 2018.
• The 15th ICQC will be held at Tsinghua University, Beijing on June 8-13, 2015. The website is already open at http://www.icqc2015.org. Four or five satellite meetings will also be organized.
• The 50^th meeting of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science was held in Menton on July 8–9, 2013.
  1. The following five people were elected as new members of the Academy:

     Joel M. Bowman (Emory University, USA)
     David M. Ceperley (University of Illinois, USA)
     Stefan Grimme (University of Bonn, Germany)
     David E. Manolopoulos (University of Oxford, UK)
     Gregory Voth (University of Chicago, USA)
     

  2. The Medal for 2013 was awarded to Takeshi Yanai (Institute for Molecular Science, Japan). The citation to accompany the medal is "For his development of novel approaches to incorporate dynamical correlation into DMRG using canonical transformation theory."
  3. Photo:
  
  
  Click the photo above for larger one.
• Prof. Isaiah Shavitt passed away on December 8th, 2012 at the age of 87. He was one of the pioneers of large-scale configuration interaction calculations. We will pay our respects to him at the next IAQMS meeting.
• In June 2012, Wolfgang Domcke received the honorary doctorate of the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics of the Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic.
• Pekka Pyykkö has been elected Honorary Fellow of the Chinese Chemical Society.
• Donations in memory of Prof. Leland Allen of Princeton University, who has recently passed away, are being accepted. The initiative for setting up a memorial fund originated with one of his early students, Prof. Arthur Lesk of Penn State University, who made the first donation. If you wish to honor Leland Allen's memory by a contribution, please send it to the IAQMS Treasurer:
  
   Dr. Michel Dupuis
   Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
   MS K1-83
   902 Battelle Boulevard
   PO Box 999
   Richland WA 99352 USA
  
  The fund will be used for operating expenses of the IAQMS, such as the production of award medals and support of ICQC attendance by students.
  
• Prof. Nicholas Handy passed away on Tuesday, October 2, 2012 at the age of 71. We will keep him and his numerous contributions to our science in our collective memory and will pay our respects to him at the next IAQMS meeting.
   The address of his wife is
   Mrs Carole Handy
   Hall Garth
   Thornthwaite
   Keswick
   Cumbria CA12 5RZ, UK
  
• The 15th International Congress of Quantum Chemistry will be held on June 8-13, 2015 at Tsinghua University, Beijing. The website of ICQC-15 is open at external link. Details, contact Professor Zhigang Shuai.
• The 49^th meeting of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science was held in Boulder on June 24–25, 2012.
  1. The following six people were elected as new members of the Academy:

     Poul Jørgensen (Aarhus University, Denmark)
     Georg Kresse (University of Vienna, Austria)
     Frank Neese (Max-Planck-Institut, Mülheim, Germany)
     Andreas Savin (Université Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris 6), France)
     Peter A. Schwerdtfeger (Massey University, New Zealand)
     Seiichiro Ten-no (Kobe University, Japan)
     

  2. The Medal for 2012 was awarded to Paul W. Ayers (McMaster University, Canada). The citation to accompany the medal is "For his outstanding contributions to density functional theory and chemical reactivity theory."
• Henry F. Schaefer III has received the 2012 Distinguished Scientist Award of SURA (The Southeastern Universities Research Association).
• Trygve Helgaker has received the Moebius Prize of the Norwegian Research Council.
• With deep sadness we receive the news that our member Eolo Scrocco passed away on January 24, 2012.
• Zhigang Shuai has been elected as a foreign member to Academia Europea. He also won the Akzo Nobel Chemical Sciences Award 2012, awarded jointly between Akzo and the Chinese Chemical Society.
• In July 2011 Sigrid Peyerimhoff was awarded the degree "Doctor rer.nat. honoris causa" by the University of Ulm.
• Our President Pekka Pyykkö has been elected as a foreign member to The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
• The American Chemical Society has granted, among its 2012 National Awards, William L. Jorgensen the Joel Henry Hildebrand Award in the Theoretical & Experimental Chemistry of Liquids, and Weitao Yang the Award for Computers in Chemical and Pharmaceutical Research.
• The 48 ^th meeting of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science was held in Menton on July 2–3, 2011.
  1. The following three people were elected as new members of the Academy.

     Jean-Luc Brédas (Georgia Institute of Technology)
     Wim Klopper (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology)
     H. Bernhard Schlegel (Wayne State University)

  2. The Medal for 2011 was awarded to Andreas Köhn (Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, Germany) for his contributions to explicitly correlated and multi-reference coupled cluster theories.
• We have been deeply grieved to learn that our member Alberte Pullman passed away on 7 January 2011. She was one of the early pioneers in applications of quantum chemistry to biological problems, and a tall figure in our area, especially in France.
• John Perdew and Bill Jorgensen were elected to the National Academy of Sciences. We congratulate John and Bill to this honor.
• We have been deeply grieved to learn that our member William Nunn Lipscomb Jr., emeritus professor at Harvard, and Nobel Prize winner in chemistry in 1976, passed away at age 91 in Cambridge, Mass. on April 14, 2011.
• The 47 ^th meeting of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science was held in Menton on July 3–4, 2010.
  1. The following people were elected as new members of the Academy.

     William L. Jorgensen (Yale University)
     Nancy Makri (University of Illinois)
     Krishnan Raghavachari (Indiana University)
     Krzysztof Szalewicz (University of Delaware)

  2. Annual Medal of the Academy was awarded to Garnet K.-L. Chan (Cornell University). The citation to accompany the medal is “For his outstanding contribution to the density matrix renormalization group theory of molecular systems.”
  
  Click the photos above for larger ones.
• Our member Kendall Houk has been elected to the US National Academy of Science. The Academy congratulates Ken to this honor.
• Bill Miller has been awarded the 2011 Ahmed Zewail prize in Molecular Sciences for his outstanding contributions to the theory of chemical reactions. The Academy congratulate Bill on the Award.
• Kwang Kim was awarded the honor of a National Scientist, the highest prize in academia in Korea. The Academy congratulates Kwang to this honor.
• Shigeki Kato passed away on March 31 at the age of 61 after a long disease. Our community has lost an excellent colleague rather prematurely. The President offers his condolences to the bereaved family.
• Kendall Houk received "Arthur C. Cope Award" of the Americal Chemical Society. The Academy congratulates Ken on this Award.
• We have been deeply grieved to learn that our member Björn Roos passed away on February 22nd after a long sickness.
  He was the great pioneer in the development and applications of theoretical/computational chemistry of his era. A great loss for quamtum chemistry. The President offered his condolences to the bereaved family.
• Quantum Molecular Science (QMS) in the World has been released.
  
• The 14th International Congress of Quantum Chemistry (ICQC) will be held on June 25–30, 2012 at Macky Auditorium, University of Colorado, Boulder. Details, contact Professor Josef Michl.
• Pekka Pyykkö received in 2009 the decoration Les Palmes Académiques granted by the French Minister of Education.
• 2009 is the first year that the American Chemical Society has elected Fellows. In the inaugural class of 162 the following IAQMS members have been elected,

  Mark Gordon
  Roald Hoffmann
  Ken Houk
  Fritz Schaefer
  George Schatz
  Don Truhlar
  John Tully

  The Academy congratulates them to this honour.
• The S F Boys - A Rahman Award 2009 of the Royal Society for outstanding innovative research in the area of computational chemistry, including both quantum chemistry and molecular simulations, was awarded to Rodney Bartlett. The Academy congratulates Rod on this prestigious Award.
• The 46 ^th meeting of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science was held Helsinki, Finland,, on June 21-22, 2009.
  1. The following people were elected as new members of the Academy.

     Emily A. Carter (Princeton University, USA)
     Jürgen Gauss (Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, German)
     Kwang S. Kim (Pohang University of Science and Technology, Korea)
     Mel Levy (Tulane University and North Carolina A&T State University)
     Gustavo E. Scuseria (Rice University, USA)
     John F. Stanton (University of Texas, Austin, USA)

  2. Annual Medal of the Academy was awarded to Mihály Kállay (The Technical University of Budapest). The citation to accompany the medal is “for his innovative and pioneering contribution to algorithmic development for generating and implementing highly accurate many-body formulations.”
  3. The Bureau 2009–2012 is: President: Pekka Pyykkö, Vice President: Josef Michl, Secretary: Kimihiko Hirao, Treasurer: Mark Gordon, Fifth Member: Jean-Marie André.
• The 2008 Schrödinger Medal of WATOC was awarded to Rod Bartlett for his outstanding work on the systematic development of correlated wave function methods, especially many-body perturbation theory and coupled cluster theory.
• The XIII^th International Congress of Quantum Chemistry (ICQC) was held on June 22–27, 2009 in Helsinki, Finland.
• Mark Gordon received the American Chemical Society Award for Computers in Chemical and Pharmaceutical Research in recognition of “his advancement and use of rigorous quantum computational methods in the elucidation of chemical structures and reactions of major relevance.” The Academy congratulates on this Award.
• Jean-Marie André was elected a member of l'Academia Europaea. We congratulate Jean-Marie to this honor.
• Joshua Jortner was awarded the 2008 EMET Prize (Section ExactSciences) “for his unique and original works, which led to the formation of many areas within physical chemistry, and shaped thinking patterns in the fields of molecular relaxation, electron-transfer processes, photoselective chemistry and the chemistry of molecular clusters, and for his significant contributions to academic research in Israel and worldwide.” The Academy congratulates to this Award.
• The Patria Prize from Unipetrol in the framework of the CESKA HLAVA Project in the Czech Republic was awarded 2008 to Josef Paldus. This prize is awarded to a Czech person with extraordinary achievements abroad in the area of basic or applied research or technological innovation. We congratulate Joe to this honour.
• Inga Fischer-Hjalmars passed away on Sept. 17, 2008 at the age of 90 years. She had great influence on the development of theoretical chemistry in Sweden, using both, semiempirical and ab initio methods. Björn Roos and Per Siegbahn, both members of our Academy, were students of her. She was elected member of IAQMS in 1983. The President offered her condolences to the bereaved family.
• In September 2008 Don Truhlar received the Schrödinger Medal of WATOC “for his outstanding contributions to the theory and computation of chemical reaction dynamics in ground and excited states.” Don Truhlar will receive the Dudley R. Herschbach Award for “bold and architectural works, inspiring and empowering in the field of the dynamics of molecular collisions.” The Award will be presented July 9, 2009, at the Conference on the Dynamics of Molecular Collisions in Snowbird, Utah. We congratulate Don to both honours!
• In June 2008 Josef Paldus was awarded the degree “Doctor honoris causa” by the Université Louis Pasteur at Strassburg. The Academy congratulates to this honour.
• At the National ACS meeting in Salt Lake City in March 2009, four members will receive ACS Awards: Bob Parr in Theoretical Chemistry, Odile Eisenstein in Organometallic Chemistry, Mark Gordon for his use of Computers in Chemical and Pharmaceutical Research, and Roald Hoffmann for Interpreting Chemistry for the Public. The Academy congratulates to these Awards.