Paul von Ragué Schleyer (1930 – 2014)

Paul von Ragué Schleyer, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA, has passed away on November 21st.
As a pioneer computational chemist, the discoveries of new molecular structures – particularly those involving lithium and electron deficient systems – are among his major achievements.

Paul von Ragué Schleyer, born in 1930 in Cleveland, OH, USA, earned his PhD from Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA, in 1954 under the supervision of Paul Doughty Bartlett. From 1954 – 1976, Schleyer was Professor at Princeton University, NJ, USA. From 1976 – 1998, he was Professor and Co-Director of the Institute of Organic Chemistry at the Friedrich-Alexander-University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany, as well as founder of the Computer Chemistry Center (CCC) there. Since 1990, Schleyer was Professor at the University of Georgia.
In the course of his career he has won a number of awards including the Heisenberg Medal, American Chemical Society (ACS) Cope Scholar Award, Bundesverdienstkreuz am Bande, German Chemical Society (GDCh) Arfvedson Schlenk Prize.

Schleyer was a former President and a Fellow of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science, former President of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science, and Editor-in-Chief of the Encyclopedia of Computational Chemistry.

Schleyer’s research focused on a broad range of physical organic, organometallic, inorganic and theoretical topics, including adamantane and related cage hydrocarbons chemistry, carbonium and onium ion chemistry, lithium chemistry, hypervalent species.

Recent publications

Covalent Hypercoordination: Can Carbon Bind Five Methyl Ligands?,
W. C. McKee, J. Agarwal, H. F. Schaefer, III, P. v. R. Schleyer,
Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2014, 53, 7875.
DOI: 10.1002/anie.201403314

Structural Isomerization of the Gas-Phase 2-Norbornyl Cation Revealed with Infrared Spectroscopy and Computational Chemistry,
J. D. Mosley, J. W. Young, J. Agarwal, H. F. Schaefer, III, P. v. R. Schleyer, M. A. Duncan,
Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2014, 53, 5888.
DOI: 10.1002/anie.201311326

Bay-Type H…H “Bonding” in cis-2-Butene and Related Species: QTAIM versus NBO description,
F. Weinhold, P. v. R. Schleyer, W. C. McKee,
J. Comput. Chem. 2014, 53, 1499.
DOI: 10.1002/jcc.23654

Arenium Ions are Not “Obligatory Intermediates” in Electrophilic Aromatic Substitution. Theory and Experiment Reveal Alternative Reaction Routes,
B. Galabov, G. Koleva, S. Simova, B. Hadjieva, H. F. Schaefer, III, P. v. R. Schleyer,
Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 2014, 111, 10067.
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1405065111

On the Nature of CH₆(²⁺),
S. Jalife, R. Grande-Aztatzi, D. Moreno, M. A. Fernandez-Herrera, E. Osorio, S. Pan, P. v. R. Schleyer, G. Martinez-Guajardo, G. Merino,
Ind. J. Chem. 2014, 58A, 992.
DOI: