Theoretical Chemistry
Charles Coulson's only formal association
with the PCL began in the summer of 1945, when he came from Dundee to take up
an I.C.I. Fellowship. He left for a Chair of Theoretical Physics at King's
College, London in October 1947, but even in this short time he had a
remarkable impact, including among his D.Phil. students Christopher
Longuet-Higgins, Bill Moffitt and Roy McWeeny, and John Maddox, who was a Part
II student. In the spring of 1952, Charles returned to Oxford as Rouse Ball
Professor of Mathematics, and established a large and active group which drew
visitors from all over the world, and he set up a Summer School in 1955 which
he led until 1973 and which, now in the Department of Theoretical Chemistry,
runs still. His 5 o'clock seminars on Tuesdays, held in the PCL, were
memorable, both for quality and range, but also in the way that Charles moved
to the heart of the matter in lucid questions and comment, and if, as sometimes
happened, the talk was a difficult one, it could be that it was these clear and
precise, but always generously expressed, comments which remained in the mind.
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Charles Coulson |
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In 1966 Mark Child joined the laboratory as
the first University Lecturer in Theoretical Chemistry with a special teaching
responsibility for the newly instituted first year mathematics course. His
research interests in molecular collision theory had been stimulated by a year
with Herschbach's burgeoning molecular beam group and by the insights these
experiments provided into the connections between classical and quantum
mechanics. The use of semiclassical techniques has remained an abiding
interest, culminating in a graduate text Semiclassical mechanics with
molecular applications (OUP, 1991).
Child left the laboratory in 1973 to join
the newly established theoretical chemistry department, but he has retained
close contacts with those interested in spectroscopy and reaction dynamics. His
current research interests lie in the connections between these fields as
probes of the fundamental dynamics of isolated molecular systems, in particular
in the theories of predissociation, inelastic scattering and intermolecular
dynamics.
The Department of Theoretical Chemistry was
finally established in 1972. Douglas Abraham had been appointed in 1971, so
that the initial establishment of the Department consisted of just three
persons, but its research activities were greatly strengthened by the presence
of Ian Grant, who held a C.U.F. lectureship in Mathematics. The Department had
been set up with the aid of a generous grant from IBM, and, following the
untimely death of Charles Coulson in January 1974, funds became available to
support three Visiting Professorships, held in 1975 by Rudi Marcus (Illinois),
in 1976 by Roy Gordon (Harvard) and in 1978 by Ben Widom (Cornell). Gordon and
Marcus were associated with University College: Widom began the equally happy
association of our distinguished visitors with St Catherine's College. Norman
March was appointed the Coulson Professor of Theoretical Chemistry in 1977. He
retires in 1994 when it is proposed that Theoretical Chemistry and the PCL be
united to form a Department of Physical and Theoretical Chemistry, and
containing the Dr Lee's and the Coulson chairs.
