Krishnan Raghavachari (born 3 April 1953, in Chennai, India) is a Professor of Chemistry at

Indiana University Bloomington Indiana University Bloomington (IU Bloomington, Indiana University, IU, or simply Indiana) is a public research university in Bloomington, Indiana. It is the flagship campus of Indiana University and, with over 40,000 students, its largest camp ...

. Raghavachari began his education in his native India, completing his undergraduate degree in 1973 at

Madras University The University of Madras (informally known as Madras University) is a public state university in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. Established in 1857, it is one of the oldest and among the most prestigious universities in India, incorporated by an a ...

and his masters from the

Indian Institute of Technology The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) are central government owned Institute of technology, public technical institutes located across India. They are under the ownership of the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Ministry of Educat ...

in 1975. Following this, he moved to the United States to attend

Carnegie-Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technol ...

for his doctorate under the tutelage of

John Pople Sir John Anthony Pople (31 October 1925 – 15 March 2004) was a British theoretical chemist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Walter Kohn in 1998 for his development of computational methods in quantum chemistry. Early ...

, completing it in 1981. Upon completing his degree, Raghavachari entered the private sector as a research scientist at

Bell Labs Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mult ...

. He served as a member of the technical staff until 1987 when he was named a distinguished member. In 2002, he joined the faculty at Indiana University. Raghavachari has been credited as one of the top

quantum chemist Quantum chemistry, also called molecular quantum mechanics, is a branch of physical chemistry focused on the application of quantum mechanics to chemical systems, particularly towards the quantum-mechanical calculation of electronic contributio ...

s in the United States and responsible for developing methods allowing for widespread use of

computational chemistry Computational chemistry is a branch of chemistry that uses computer simulation to assist in solving chemical problems. It uses methods of theoretical chemistry, incorporated into computer programs, to calculate the structures and properties of mo ...

. Among the methods he has developed over his career are CCSD(T), used to evaluate bond energies and the properties of molecules and the Gaussian-2, 3, and 4 methods. Over the course of his career, Raghavachari has given over 150 invited lectures, published over 320 scientific papers, and has been cited over 50,000 times by others in the field. He has also served as chair of the Theoretical Chemistry Subdivision of the American Chemical Society, on the editorial boards of the ''

Journal of Physical Chemistry ''The Journal of Physical Chemistry A'' is a scientific journal which reports research on the chemistry of molecules A molecule is a group of two or more atoms held together by attractive forces known as chemical bonds; depending on conte ...

'', ''

Journal of Computational Chemistry The ''Journal of Computational Chemistry'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal published since 1980 by John Wiley & Sons. It covers research, contemporary developments in theory and methodology, and applications in all areas of computational chem ...

'', ''

Theoretical Chemistry Accounts ''Theoretical Chemistry Accounts: Theory, Computation, and Modeling'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal publishing original (primary) research and review articles in theoretical chemistry, physical chemistry, quantum chemistry, and computationa ...

'', and ''

Journal of Materials Research The ''Journal of Materials Research'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal which covers research in materials science. The journal was established in 1986 and is the official journal of the Materials Research Society. The journal is published by ...

''.

Honours and awards

* 2009 Davisson-Germer Prize in Surface Physics, American Physical Society * 2008

Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry Fellowship of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC) is an award conferred by the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) in the United Kingdom. FRSC award Achieving Fellow status in the chemical profession denotes to the wider community a high level o ...

* 2001

Fellow of the American Physical Society The American Physical Society honors members with the designation ''Fellow'' for having made significant accomplishments to the field of physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its moti ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Raghavachari, Krishnan 1953 births Living people People from Chennai IIT Madras alumni Indiana University Bloomington staff University of Madras alumni Carnegie Mellon University alumni 21st-century American chemists Theoretical chemists Members of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science Fellows of the American Physical Society Fellows of the Royal Society of Chemistry