Nobel Prize

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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…

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  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…

  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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Written over the author’s signature and translated into English by Fernando Rodrigues and Tim Crosfield I was born in a family of landless peasants, in Azinhaga, a small village in the province of Ribatejo, on the right bank of the Almonda River, around a hundred kilometres north-east of Lisbon. My parents were José de Sousa…

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French Notice Biobibliographique José Saramago, originaire d’une famille d’agriculteurs, naquit en 1922 dans le petit village d’Azinhaga (Ribatejo), au nord de Lisbonne. Pour des raisons financières, il abandonna le lycée afin de suivre une formation de mécanicien. Il s’essaya à divers métiers dans l’administration publique, travailla douze ans dans des maisons d’édition puis dans des…