Werner Kutzelnigg (September 10, 1933 – November 24, 2019 in

Bochum Bochum (, ; ; ; ) is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia. With a population of 372,348 (April 2023), it is the sixth-largest city (after Cologne, Düsseldorf, Dortmund, Essen and Duisburg) in North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous German federa ...

) was a prominent Austrian-born

theoretical chemist Theoretical chemistry is the branch of chemistry which develops theoretical generalizations that are part of the theoretical arsenal of modern chemistry: for example, the concepts of chemical bonding, chemical reaction, valence, the surface o ...

and professor in the Chemistry Faculty,

Ruhr-Universität Bochum The Ruhr University Bochum (, ) is a public research university located in the southern hills of the central Ruhr area, Bochum, Germany. It was founded in 1962 as the first new public university in Germany after World War II. Instruction began in ...

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

. Kutzelnigg was born in

Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...

. His most significant contributions were in the following fields:

relativistic quantum chemistry Relativistic quantum chemistry combines relativistic mechanics with quantum chemistry to calculate elemental properties and structure, especially for the heavier elements of the periodic table. A prominent example is an explanation for the color of ...

coupled cluster Coupled cluster (CC) is a numerical technique used for describing many-body systems. Its most common use is as one of several post-Hartree–Fock ab initio quantum chemistry methods in the field of computational chemistry, but it is also used ...

methods, theoretical calculation of

NMR Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) is a physical phenomenon in which atomic nucleus, nuclei in a strong constant magnetic field are disturbed by a weak oscillating magnetic field (in the near and far field, near field) and respond by producing ...

chemical shift In nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, the chemical shift is the resonant frequency of an atomic nucleus relative to a standard in a magnetic field. Often the position and number of chemical shifts are diagnostic of the structure of ...

s, explicitly correlated wavefunctions. He was a member of the

International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science The International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science (IAQMS) is an international scientific learned society covering all applications of quantum theory to chemistry and chemical physics. It was created in Menton in 1967. The founding members we ...

Life

Werner Kutzelnigg studied chemistry in Bonn and Freiburg i. Br. and was awarded his doctorate in 1960 for his experimental work "Untersuchungen zur Zuordnung der Normalschwingungen und Aufklärung der Struktur organischer Ionen". He then turned to theoretical chemistry and became a postdoc with Bernard Pullman and Gaston Berthier in Paris from 1960 to 1963 and with Per-Olov Löwdin at Uppsala University from 1963 to 1964. In 1967 Kutzelnigg habilitated at the University of Göttingen under Werner A. Bingel. From 1970 to 1973 he was professor at the University of Karlsruhe and then full professor at the Chair of Theoretical Chemistry at the Ruhr University Bochum from 1972 until his retirement in 1998. Kutzelnigg has published papers on various topics in quantum chemistry: methods of treating electron correlation, magnetic properties of molecules (especially chemical shift), relativistic quantum chemistry, theory of chemical bonding and theory of intermolecular forces. Kutzelnigg also became known for his standard work Einführung in die theoretische Chemie.

Awards

* Carl-Duisberg-Gedächtnispreis (1971) * Schrödinger Medal of the World Association of Theoretical and Computational Chemists (1995) * Liebig-Denkmünze of the Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker (1996) * Erich-Hückel-Preis of the Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker (2016) * Member of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science

References

His International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science web page
1933 births 2019 deaths Austrian chemists Theoretical chemists Members of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science Schrödinger Medal recipients Computational chemists {{chemist-stub