Robert G. Parr, a professor emeritus of chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has been awarded the 2009 award in theoretical chemistry from the American Chemical Society.
The award recognizes innovative research in theoretical chemistry that either advances theoretical methodology or contributes to new discoveries about chemical systems.
Parr has been a pioneer in the field of quantum chemistry since the 1950s. He has influenced how thousands of chemists, physicists and other scientists use quantum chemistry in their work. His book, “Quantum Theory of Molecular Electronic Structure” (1963), was one of the first to apply quantum theory to a broad range of chemical systems. He is also the author of “Density Functional Theory of Atoms and Molecules (1989).
In 1988, Parr and colleagues published an improved method of approximating correlation energy (a mathematical expression that accounts for how electrons in a many-electron system interact with one another). The Lee-Yang-Parr (LYP) method has been cited more than 22,000 times, making it one of the most highly cited papers in chemistry. Although the mathematical method is now 20 years old, it remains the most widely used method. Scientists have broadly applied LYP, citing it in papers ranging from nanotechnology developments to the synthesis of antibiotics.
Parr, a native of Chicago, taught at Carnegie Mellon and Johns Hopkins universities before coming to Carolina’s College of Arts and Sciences in 1974. He was named UNC’s Wassily Hoeffding Professor of Chemical Physics in 1990; he retired in 1991. He is a member of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science and a previous winner of a National Academy of Sciences award in chemical sciences.
With more than 160,000 members, the American Chemical Society is the world’s largest scientific society. The society publishes numerous scientific journals, convenes major research conferences and provides educational, science policy and career programs in chemistry.
