Purdue Professor Ei-ichi Negishi wins Nobel Prize in Chemistry

Distinguished Professor of Chemistry Ei-ichi Negishi of Purdue University, Richard Heck of the University of Delaware in Newark and Akira Suzuki of Hokkaido University in Sapporo, Japan are a co-recipients of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for palladium-catalyzed cross couplings in organic synthesis.

West Lafayette, Indiana, Oct-06-2010

The conference season

University of Notre Dame, Indiana

• May 20-22, 42^nd Midwest Theoretical Chemistry Conference,
  Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN
• May 24-29, Molecular Quantum Mechanics, an International Conference in Honor of Professor Henry F. Schaefer III,
  University of California, Berkeley, CA (photos)
• June 2-3, Midwest Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics Conference,
  University of Notre Dame, IN (photos)
• 18-23 July, Gordon Research Conference on Atomic & Molecular Interactions,
  Colby-Sawyer College, New London, NH (Colby-Sawyer College, Mount Kearsarge)
• August 22-26, American Chemical Society, 240^th National Meeting and Exposition,
  Boston, MA (photos)

West Lafayette, Indiana, Jul-27-2010

In Memory of Professor Andrzej Sadlej

Andrzej Sadlej, passed away on March 24, 2010 after a lengthy battle with lung cancer. He was 69. His death leaves a void both in the scientific community and in the lives of his family, friends and colleagues. His professionalism and passion for science will be a lasting inspiration to all of us.

Andrzej Jerzy Sadlej was born on November 9, 1941 (Lublin, Poland). After graduating in Chemistry at the University of Warsaw in 1964 and receiving his Ph.D. degree in 1968 from Jagiellonian University he worked at Institute of Organic Chemistry of Poland Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. In 1983 he was awarded with a title of professor of Сhemistry from Jagiellonian University. In 1981 he moved to Lund University in Sweden. He also visited as a research professor many universities around the world. In 1997 he went back to Poland where become a head of the Department of Quantum Chemistry at Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun. Andrzej Sadlej was also a member of many professional societies among them: American Physical Society, American Chemical Society, European Physical Society and Polish Chemical Society.

Andrzej Sadlej is known for his works in development of polarized basis sets which are used for accurate calculations of static and dynamic electric properties of molecules. He also made important contributions to the perturbation theory, and relativistic quantum chemistry.

West Lafayette, Indiana, Apr-14-2010

42^nd Midwest Theoretical Chemistry Conference at Purdue University

This year’s 42^ndMidwest Theoretical Chemistry Conference will be hosted by our theoretical group at Purdue University. Diverse participants will range from internationally renowned scientists among them: George Schatz (Northwestern U.), Jack Simons (U. Utah), Igal Szleifer (Northwestern U.), James Skinner (U. Wisconsin-Madison), Nancy Makri (U. Illinois Urbana-Champaign), Peter Ortoleva (Indiana U.) and Eric Heller (Harvard U.) to younger theorists, post docs and students. The conference has a long history back to 1967 when the first conference was held at the University of Chicago. Last year conference was held at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.
The registration is open until May 20, 2010. You are welcome to attend!

West Lafayette, Indiana, Apr-13-2010

Movie by Nobel Laureate Irving Langmuir, 1927

I read about this documentary in the nice book by Patrick Coffey „Cathedrals of Science“. The movie was shot by famous physical chemist Irving Langmuir (the 1932 Nobel Prize winner) during the 5^th Solvay Conference in Brussels, October 1927. It is difficult to imagine that almost all founders of the quantum mechanics gathered at one conference: A. Einstein, M. Curie, E. Schrödinger, M. Planck, N. Bohr, W. Pauli, W. Heisenberg, P.A.M. Dirac, L. de Broglie, P. Ehrenfest, L. Brillouin, P. Debye, W.L. Bragg, H.A. Kramers, A.H. Compton, M. Born, I. Langmuir, H.A. Lorentz, P. Langevin and other great scientists.


The voiceover is by Nancy Thorndike Greenspan.

West Lafayette, Indiana, Jan-2-2010