Josef Paldus

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. Čížek):

Formulation of stability conditions for Hartree-Fock solutions and of the concepts of their singlet, doublet, etc. stability.
First ab initio exploitation of the coupled-cluster theory, including an approximate account of triples.
Exploitation of field-theoretical and diagrammatic methods in quantum chemistry.
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.
Property calculations via coupled-cluster linear response techniques.
Formulation of externally-corrected coupled-cluster approaches.
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.