2019 Danforth Lecture Explores Chemistry's Place As "The Central Science"

Event Details

Time: 11 a.m.
Date: April 30, 2019
Location: Joe Rosenfield ’25 Center, Room 101

Jochen Autschbach will present the 2019 Danforth Lecture, “Chemistry: A personal perspective.” Chemistry is often referred to as the ‘central science.’ In this talk, Autschbach will provide a personal perspective on the reasons why chemistry deserves this central place in science, and provide some important, some entertaining, and some curious facts.

Autschbach will also comment on the changing role of computational chemistry over the past few decades, as it has now become an indispensable component of chemical research.

Speaker Bio

Jochen Autschbach obtained a doctoral degree in natural sciences from the University of Siegen in 1999. After postdoctoral research with Tom Ziegler in Calgary, Canada (1999-2002) and a brief stay at the University of Erlangen in Germany as an Emmy-Noether Fellow (2002-3), Autschbach joined the Department of Chemistry at the University at Buffalo in 2003 and became full professor in 2009. In 2018, he was appointed as John D. & Frances H. Larkin Foundation Chair.

Autschbach’s research is in theoretical and computational chemistry, and focuses on response properties of molecules and extended systems, dynamic phenomena, relativistic quantum chemistry, and chemical bonding, with applications in spectroscopy, magnetic resonance, optical activity, and nonlinear optics. Autschbach has published over 300 research articles and book chapters. He is nearly done writing a comprehensive textbook on quantum theory for students and researchers working in chemistry, chemical engineering, and other chemistry-related fields.