Born November 25, 1935 in Czech Republic.
Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Department
of Applied Mathematics, Department of Chemistry, and Guelph-Waterloo
Center for Graduate Work in Chemistry, University of Waterloo, Canada.
Also an Adjunct Professor, Department of Chemistry, University of
Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA.
Email: paldus@scienide.uwaterloo.ca
Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (1983-). Fellow, Institute for
Advanced Study, Berlin (1985-6). Killam Research Fellow (1987-9).
Fellow, Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences (2002-).
Member, Board of Directors, International Society for Theoretical
Chemical Physics (1990-). Honorary Member, The Learned Society of
Czech Republic (1994-). Corresponding Member, European Academy of
Sciences, Arts, and Letters (1981-). J. Heyrovský Gold Medal
of Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences (1992). Comenius University,
Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Bratislava, Slovakia, Gold Medal
(1994). Alexander von Humboldt Senior Scientist Award (1996). A
special issue of the Journal of Molecular Structure (Theochem) published
in honor of his 65th birthday (vol. 547, 2001).
Gold Medal, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic (2005).
Four special issues (Nos. 5-8, Vol. 70, May-August) of the
"Collection of Czechoslovak Chemical Communications" were
published as a Festschrift to honor my 70th birthday (2005).
Awarded a honorary degree "Doctor honoris causa" by the
Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia (2006).
Author of:
Over 290 scientific papers in various international
journals, including over 20 book chapters.
Important Contributions:
Early work in theoretical
polarography (with J. Koutecky) on polarographic kinetic currents
and experimental work in high-resolution optical spectroscopy
(with D. A. Ramsay) leading to the first rotational analysis of
a truly polyatomic molecule and the determination of the first
singlet excited state geometry of glyoxal.
His
principal interest and work concerns the development of quantum
chemical methodology. Major contributions include (several with
J. Čízek):
(i) Formulation of stability conditions for Hartree-Fock solutions
and of the concepts of their singlet, doublet, etc. stability.
(ii) First ab initio exploitation of the coupled-cluster theory,
including an approximate account of triples.
(iii) Exploitation of field-theoretical and diagrammatic methods
in quantum chemistry.
(iv) Formulation of algebraic techniques, involving both compact
and noncompact Lie groups or algebras, in particular the unitary
groups and Clifford algebra approaches and their exploitation
in large-scale configuration interaction calculations, as well
as in coupled-cluster and valence-bond approaches.
(v) Property calculations via coupled-cluster linear response
techniques.
(vi) Formulation of externally-corrected coupled-cluster approaches.
(vii) Developments in multi-reference coupled cluster theory,
in particular the exact formulation of valence universality and
lately of the general-model-space coupled-cluster approach via
the so-called C-conditions.
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