Athens, Ga. – Kenneth Wiberg, the Eugene Higgins Professor of Chemistry Emeritus at Yale University, will deliver the 2011 Paul von Ragué Schleyer Lecture Feb. 22 at 11 a.m. in room 400 of the Chemistry Building on the University of Georgia campus. The event is free and open to the public.
Wiberg is one of the “legends of organic chemistry,” said to Henry F. Schaefer III, director of the UGA Center for Computational Chemistry, the UGA Graham Perdue Professor and one of the event coordinators. Wiberg has been a member of the National Academy of Sciences since 1967 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1968. He also has been named winner of numerous awards and recognition, including the J. F. Norris Award in Physical Organic Chemistry.
Later that evening, Wiberg will discuss “A Life in Organic Chemistry” at a dinner being held in his honor at the Georgia Center for Continuing Education Conference Center and Hotel.Persons interested in attending the evening program may contact Linda Rowe at 706/542-0364 or lsr@uga.edu.
This annual lecture is held in honor of longtime UGA chemistry faculty member Schleyer, an organic physical chemist whose research has been cited frequently throughout the years. A 1997 survey indicated that Schleyer was, at that time, the world’s third most cited chemist, with more than 1,100 technical papers produced. He was Higgins Professor of Chemistry at Princeton University, professor and co-director of the Institute for Organic Chemistry at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany, and he has been the UGA Graham Perdue Professor of Chemistry.
He has published 12 books in the fields of lithium chemistry, ab initio molecular orbital theory and carbonium ions. He is past president of the World Association of Theoretically Oriented Chemists, a fellow of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science and editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia of Computational Chemistry.
For more information about the UGA Chemistry Department, see http://www.chem.uga.edu/.
