Advances in Quantum Chemistry

Erkki Brändas was born in Tampere, Finland in July1940 and was, as a Finnish war child, transported to Sweden in February 1942, finally adopted by his Swedish parents and given Swedish citizenship in 1947. He received his FL (PhD) in 1969 and Doctor of Philosophy (habilitation) in 1972, both at Uppsala University. Except for guest professorships in USA, Germany, Israel, he spent his professional career in Uppsala employed as Assistant- Associate- and Full Professor from 1975 until retirement in 2007. In addition to serving as chairman of the department of Quantum Chemistry, he was appointed Executive Director of the Uppsala Graduate School Advanced Instrumentation and Measurement supervising the doctoral education of 35 PhD’s from 1997-2007. He has served on various international scientific and editorial boards, e.g. Wiley, Elsevier and Springer including the service as Editor-in-Chief for the International Journal of Quantum Chemistry, Series Editor of the Advances in Quantum Chemistry. He is the current President of the International Society for Theoretical Chemical Physics, since 15 years, chairing a variety of international congresses and other numerous meetings, schools and workshops. He has published over 260 articles and edited more than 50 books on fundamental theoretical chemical physics from research on atoms, molecules and solid-state physics to complex enough systems in biology – from the microscopic realm to the cosmological rank.

Rod Bartlett pioneered the development of coupled-cluster (CC) theory in quantum chemistry to offer highly accurate solutions of the Schroedinger equation for molecular structure and spectra, presenting the CCSD, CCSD[T], CCSDT, CCSDT[Qf], and CCSDTQ methods among many others. He extended the CC theory to excited, ionized, and electron attached states with his equation-of-motion EOM-CC methods. His group formulated analytical gradient theory for CC theory, making it possible to readily search potential energy surfaces and to provide vibrational spectra. His group introduced the STEOM-CC extensions for excited states.

His group is also responsible for the widely used ACES II and massively parallel ACES III program system. He is the author of more than 500 journal articles and book chapters. He is the co-author with Isaiah Shavitt of the definitive book on coupled-cluster theory, “Many-Body Methods in Chemistry and Physics: MBPT and Coupled-Cluster theory,” Cambridge Press, 2009.