Jack Simons

Jack Simons (born April 2, 1945 in Youngstown (Ohio) ) is an American chemist ( theoretical chemistry , quantum chemistry , especially of anions ).

Simons graduated from the Case Institute of Technology with a bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1967 and received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin in 1970. He was a post-doctoral student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . He is a professor at the University of Utah , where he has been since 1971.

In the 1970s he developed the Equations of Motion (EOM) method for the direct calculation of electron affinities of molecules. In addition, his group was one of the first to calculate dipole-bound anions (in which the additional electron is bound via the dipole field of the molecule). In the 1980s, he calculated the metastable states of molecular anions and the mechanism by which molecular anions convert internal degrees of freedom of rotation and vibration into the energy an electron needs to emit. In the 1980s and 1990s, he developed methods to develop first and second derivatives for the energy surface of molecular wave functions for wandering on the molecular energy surfaces to determine minima and transition states. His group also investigated unusual molecular anions (such as multiply charged anions, hypervalent anions, Rydberg excitations, anions with carbon in a four-coordinate planar arrangement) and in the 2000s how electrons bind to DNA and positively charged polypeptides and contribute to their fragmentation.

He wrote a textbook on theoretical chemistry.

In 2013 he received the Joseph O. Hirschfelder Prize . He was a Sloan Fellow in 1973, a Camille and Henry Dreyfuß Fellow, and a Guggenheim Fellow in 1979. In 2003 he was a Mulliken Lecturer. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society . In 1983 he received the medal from the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Sciences.

He is married to the radiologist Peg Simons. He is a passionate skier and hiker.

Fonts

• An Introduction to Theoretical Chemistry, Cambridge University Press 2003
• with Poul.Jørgensen: Second Quantization-Based Methods in Quantum Chemistry, Academic Press 1981
• Energetic Principles of Chemical Reactions, Jones and Bartlett Publishers, 1983
• with Poul.Jørgensen (Ed.): Geometrical Derivative of Energy Surfaces and Molecular Properties, D. Reidel Publishing Company 1985
• with J. Nichols: Quantum Mechanics in Chemistry, Oxford University Press 1997

Web links

• Homepage