Discovery Institute Fellow Elected to Prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences
SEATTLE, MAY 25 — Discovery Institute Fellow Dr. Henry F. Schaefer III, Graham Perdue Professor of Chemistry at the University of Georgia, has been elected to the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The Academy elected 178 Fellows from 24 states and 24 Foreign Honorary Members from 13 countries, in April.
Dr. Schaefer is a world-renowned scientist researching computational chemistry, using state-of-the-art computational hardware and theoretical methods to solve important problems in molecular quantum mechanics.
Schaefer is the author of one of the best selling books published by the University of Georgia, “Science and Christianity: Conflict or Coherence?” (2004). Using personal anecdotes and a healthy dose of humor, “Science and Christianity: Conflict or Coherence?” explores many of the current controversies between science and religion.
“It’s an honor to work with someone like Fritz Schaefer whom the academy is recognizing for his important scientific research and his leadership in science education,” said Dr. Stephen C. Meyer, director of Discovery Institute’s Center for Science & Culture.
About Henry F. Schaefer
Henry F. Schaefer III was born in Grand Rapids, Mich., in 1944. He received his B.S. degree in chemical physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1966) and Ph.D. degree in chemical physics from Stanford University (1969). For 18 years (1969-1987) he served as a professor of chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. During the 1979-1980 academic year, he was also Wilfred T. Doherty Professor of Chemistry and inaugural director of the Institute for Theoretical Chemistry at the University of Texas, Austin.
Since 1987 Schaefer has been at UGA. His other academic appointments include Professeur d’Echange at the University of Paris (1977); Gastprofessur at the Eidgenossische Technische Hochshule (ETH), Zurich (1994, 1995, 1997, 2000, 2002, 2004); and David P. Craig Visiting Professor at the Australian National University (1999). He is the author of more than 1,000 scientific publications, the majority appearing in the Journal of Chemical Physics or the Journal of the American Chemical Society. During the comprehensive period of 1981-1997, Schaefer was the sixth most highly cited chemist in the world, out of a total of 628,000 chemists whose research was cited.
Schaefer has presented plenary lectures at more than 180 national or international scientific conferences. He has delivered endowed or named lectures or lecture series at more than 30 major universities, including the 1998 Kenneth S. Pitzer Memorial Lecture at Berkeley. He is the recipient of eleven honorary degrees.
He is the editor-in-chief of the London-based journal Molecular Physics and president of the World Association of Theoretically Oriented Chemists. His service to the chemical community includes the chairmanship of the American Chemical Society’s Subdivision of Theoretical Chemistry (1982) and Division of Physical Chemistry (1992). His major awards include the American Chemical Society Award in Pure Chemistry (1979, “for the development of computational quantum chemistry into a reliable quantitative field of chemistry and for prolific exemplary calculations of broad chemical interest”); the American Chemical Society Leo Hendrik Baekeland Award (1983, “for his contributions to computational quantum chemistry and for outstanding applications of this technique to a wide range of chemical problems”); the Schroedinger Medal (1990); and the Centenary Medal of the Royal Society of Chemistry (London, 1992, as “the first theoretical chemist successfully to challenge the accepted conclusions of a distinguished experimental group for a polyatomic molecule, namely methylene”). In 2003 he received two major awards from the American Chemical Society: the Theoretical Chemistry Award and the Ira M. Remsen Award.