Pople, Sir John Anthony

▪ 2005

      British mathematical chemist (b. Oct. 31, 1925, Burnham-on-Sea, Somerset, Eng.—d. March 15, 2004, Chicago, Ill.), won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1998 for his development of computational methods for modeling chemical reactions; he shared the award with Austrian-born American physical chemist Walter Kohn. In particular, Pople wrote what became the standard research tool for physical chemists, the computer program Gaussian, which enabled researchers to calculate, rather than measure, the shape and properties of molecules on the basis of quantum theory. Gaussian proved to be particularly useful in the search for new pharmaceuticals. Pople earned a doctorate (1951) from the University of Cambridge, where he remained as a fellow at Trinity College (1951–58) and a lecturer in mathematics (1954–58) until he left in 1958 to head the basic physics division at the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington, Eng. In 1964 he moved to the United States, where he taught at the Carnegie Institute of Technology (later Carnegie Mellon University), Pittsburgh, Pa. (1964–93), and at Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill. (1993–2004). Although Pople never took a chemistry course and was initially turned down for membership in the American Chemical Society, he was awarded the Wolf Prize in Chemistry in 1992. He remained a British citizen and was knighted in 2003.

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