Professor Emeritus Werner Kutzelnigg, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany, has received the first Erich Hückel Award from the Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker (GDCh, German Chemical Society). The award was presented at the 52nd Symposium on Theoretical Chemistry in Bochum on September 28, 2016.
The Erich Hückel Award honors outstanding achievements in the field of theoretical chemistry. Werner Kutzelnigg is recognized for his seminal contributions to the understanding of chemical bonds, electron correlation, and relativistic quantum chemistry.
Werner Kutzelnigg was born in Vienna, Austria. He studied chemistry at the Universities of Bonn and Freiburg, both Germany, and received his Ph.D. for work on infrared spectroscopy. He worked as a postdoctoral researcher with Bernard Pullman und Gaston Berthier in Paris, France, from 1960 to 1963 and with Per-Olov Löwdin in Uppsala, Sweden, from 1963 to 1964. Kutzelnigg finished his habilitation in 1967 at the University of Göttingen, Germany. He joined the University of Karlsruhe, Germany, as Associate Professor in 1970 and moved to the Ruhr-Universität Bochum as Full Professor of Theoretical Chemistry in 1973. Kutzelnigg remained in Bochum until his retirement in 1998.
Professor Kutzelnigg’s research interests include electron correlation in atoms and molecules, the magnetic properties of molecules, relativistic quantum chemistry, and the theory of the chemical bond. He is well-known among students for his book “Einführung in die Theoretische Chemie” (Introduction to Theoretical Chemistry).
Among other honors, Kutzelnigg has received the Carl Duisberg Memorial Award from the GDCh in 1971, the Liebig Medal from the GDCh in 1996, and the Schrödinger Medal from the World Association of Theoretical and Computational Chemists (WATOC) in 1995.
Selected Publications
- Density cumulant functional theory from a unitary transformation: N-representability, three-particle correlation effects, and application to O4+,
Alexander Yu. Sokolov, Henry F. Schaefer, Werner Kutzelnigg,
J. Chem. Phys. 2014, 141, 074111.
DOI: 10.1063/1.4892946 - Expansion of a wave function in a Gaussian basis. I. Local versus global approximation,
Werner Kutzelnigg,
Int. J. Quantum Chem. 2013, 113, 203–217.
DOI: 10.1002/qua.24224 - Separation of strong (bond-breaking) from weak (dynamical) correlation,
Werner Kutzelnigg,
Chem. Phys. 2012, 401, 119–124.
DOI: 10.1016/j.chemphys.2011.10.020 - Solved and unsolved problems in relativistic quantum chemistry,
Werner Kutzelnigg,
Chem. Phys. 2012, 395, 16–34.
DOI: 10.1016/j.chemphys.2011.06.001 - Einführung in die Theoretische Chemie (in German),
Werner Kutzelnigg,
Wiley-VCH, Weinheim, 2011.
ISBN: 978-3-527-30609-1 - Which masses are vibrating or rotating in a molecule?,
Werner Kutzelnigg,
Mol. Phys. 2010, 105, 2627–2647.
DOI: 10.1080/00268970701604671 - Quasirelativistic theory. II. Theory at matrix level,
Wenjian Liu, Werner Kutzelnigg,
J. Chem. Phys. 2007, 126, 114107.
DOI: 10.1063/1.2710258 - What I like about Hückel theory,
Werner Kutzelnigg,
J. Comput. Chem. 2007, 28, 25–34.
DOI: 10.1002/jcc.20470 - Density-cumulant functional theory,
Werner Kutzelnigg,
J. Chem. Phys. 2006, 125, 171101.
DOI: 10.1063/1.2387955
