Nobel Prize

Presentation Speech by Professor Sten Lindahl of the at the Karolinska Institutet, December 10, 1998. Translation of the Swedish text. Professor Sten Lindahl delivering the Presentation Speech for the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine at the Stockholm Concert Hall.   Your Majesties, Your Royal Highness, Ladies and Gentlemen, When Robert Furchgott,…

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Swedish 13 oktober 1998 har utdelat 1998 års Nobelpris i kemi inom området kvantkemi till Walter Kohn, University of California at Santa Barbara, USA och John A. Pople, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, USA (brittisk medborgare). Pristagarna har var för sig gjort banbrytande insatser för att utveckla metoder som kan användas för att teoretiskt studera molekylers…

  John A. Pople has developed computational methods in chemistry. These are based on different descriptions of the wave function in the Schrödinger equation. He has created a theoretical model chemistry in which a series of increasingly refined approximations systematically approaches the exact solution to the quantum-mechanical equations. In this way it has become possible…

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  The mechanisms of chemical reactions can be studied with quantum-chemical methods. The Schrödinger equation gives an energy for each molecular structure. The energy curve for a given reaction path, which passes through different intermediate states (minima) and transition states (maxima), shows whether that particular mechanism is possible. The diagram shows possible mechanisms for how…

  Walter Kohn showed in 1964-65 that the energy of a quantum-mechanical system is uniquely determined by its electron density. This quantity is more easily handled than the complicated wave function in the Schrödinger equation. Kohn also provided a method which made it possible to set up equations whose solutions give the system’s electron density…

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The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded the 1998 Nobel Prize in Chemistry in the area of quantum chemistry to Walter Kohn for his development of the density-functional theory and to John A. Pople for his development of computational methods for use in quantum chemistry.  

    Chemistry is not only test tubes and chemicals. In quantum chemistry, quantum mechanics is used to compute the properties of molecules and their interaction. This year’s laureates have made it possible to use the complex equations of quantum mechanics to study molecules and chemical processes with the help of computers. H2 H +…