Donald Truhlar
| Donald G. Truhlar | |
|---|---|
| Born |
February 27, 1944 (age 72) Chicago, Illinois United States |
| Residence | United States |
| Nationality | American |
| Fields | Computational Chemistry, Theoretical Chemistry, Quantum Chemistry |
| Institutions | University of Minnesota |
| Alma mater | California Institute of Technology |
| Doctoral advisor | Aron Kuppermann |
| Known for | Density Functional Theory, solvation models, Basis sets, quantum chemical methods |
Donald G. Truhlar is an American scientist working in computational quantum and theoretical chemistry, chemical physics.[1]
Education and early work
Truhlar received a B.A., from St. Mary's College of Minnesota (1965), and a Ph. D., from Caltech (1970), under Aron Kupperman;[2] He has been on the faculty of the University of Minnesota from 1969–present.
Important Contributions
Truhlar is known for his contributions[3] to theoretical chemical dynamics of chemical reactions; quantum mechanical scattering theory of chemical reactions and molecular energy transfer; electron scattering; theoretical kinetics and chemical dynamics; potential energy surfaces and molecular interactions; path integrals; variational transition state theory; the use of electronic structure theory for calculations of chemical structure, reaction rates, electronically nonadiabatic processes, and solvation effects; photochemistry; combustion chemistry; heterogeneous, homogeneous, and enzyme catalysis; atmospheric and environmental chemistry; drug design; nanoparticle structure and energetics; density functional theory (where its main contributions are represented by the Minnesota Functionals) and so on.
Awards and honors
Truhlar has been Associate Editor of the Journal of the American Chemical Society, 1984–present, the editor of Theoretica Chimica Acta. 1985–98. and the Editor of Computer Physics Communications, 1986–present.
He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, (1994) and the American Physical Society, 1986; he was elected a National Councilor of the American Chemical Society for 1985–87. He has been a visiting Fellow at the Battelle Memorial Institute in 1973, and the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics, 1975–76, and held an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellowship, 1973.
He has received the ACS Peter Debye Award for Physical Chemistry, 2006; the Lise Meitner Lectureship Award, 2006; the Schrödinger Medal of The World Association of Theoretical and Computational Chemists, 2006. the ACS Award for Computers in Chemical and Pharmaceutical Research, 2000; the Minnesota Award, 2003 ("for outstanding contributions to the chemical sciences"), the National Academy of Sciences Award for Scientific Reviewing, 2004; and the NSF Creativity Award, 1993.[4]