Henry Schaefer visits UCF on Jan. 14

Through the Distinguished Speakers series, the College of Sciences is bringing Henry F. “Fritz” Schaefer, III to UCF on January 14.

Schaefer will speak at 4:30 p.m. in HEC 125. His talk is titled “The Third Age of Quantum Chemistry.” He will discuss how quantum chemistry became reliable for the prediction of new chemistry. Schaefer will also provide examples of how theoretical chemistry inspires experimental chemists in their laboratory explorations.

Schaefer received his B.S. in chemical physics from MIT in 1966 and his PhD in chemical physics from Stanford University in 1969.  He was a professor of chemistry at UC Berkeley from 1969 to 1987. He moved to Georgia and is currently the Graham Perdue Professor of Chemistry and Director of the Center for Computational Chemistry.

His research involves the use of computational hardware and theoretical methods to solve problems in molecular quantum mechanics. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the Royal Society of Chemistry (London).  He has been awarded the American Chemical Society Awards for Pure and Theoretical Chemistry, the Leo Hendrik Baekeland award, the Joseph O. Hirschfelder Prize, and the Centenary Medal of the Royal Society of Chemistry (London), as well as many other awards. Schaefer is the author of more than 1,200 scientific publications and was the sixth most cited chemist from 1981 to 1997.