Henry F. Schaefer, III
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Categories: Living people | Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences | American chemists | Discovery Institute fellows and advisors | Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni | Stanford University alumni | University of Georgia faculty | Intelligent design advocates | ISCID fellows | Signatories of "A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism" | International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science members
Henry "Fritz" Schaefer III (born June 8, 1944) is a computational and theoretical chemist. He is the author of a large number of scientific publications, and was the 6th most cited chemist from 1981 to 1997 [1] and the Graham Perdue Professor of Chemistry and Director of the Center for Computational Chemistry at the University of Georgia.[2] Schaefer is also a prominent proponent of intelligent design. He is a Fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture,[3] the hub of the intelligent design movement, and the International Society for Complexity, Information and Design,[4] and a signer of the Discovery Institute's anti-evolution letter, A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism.[5]
BiographyEarly life and educationHe was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and was educated in Syracuse, New York; Menlo Park, California; and East Grand Rapids, Michigan. He was awarded a B.S. degree in chemical physics by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1966 and a Ph.D. degree in chemical physics from Stanford University in 1969. He was professor of chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley from 1969 to 1987. In 1979-1980 he was Wilfred T. Doherty Professor of Chemistry and inaugural Director of the Institute for Theoretical Chemistry at the University of Texas, Austin. In 1987 he moved to the University of Georgia, where he is Graham Perdue Professor of Chemistry and Director of the Center for Computational Chemistry. He is a member of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science. In 2004 he became Professor of Chemistry, Emeritus, at UC Berkeley. His other academic appointments include Professeur d'Echange at the University of Paris (1977), Gastprofessur at the Eidgenossische Technische Hochshule (ETH), Zurich (1994, 1995, 1997, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006), and David P. Craig Visiting Professor at the Australian National University (1999). He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences [6] in 2004 and became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (London) in 2005. Research and booksResearch within the Schaefer group involves the use of computational hardware and theoretical methods to solve problems in molecular quantum mechanics. His contributions to the field of quantum chemistry include a paper challenging, on theoretical grounds, the geometry of triplet methylene as assigned by Nobel Prize-winning experimentalist Gerhard Herzberg; the development of the Z-vector method simplifying certain calculations of correlated systems; and a wide body of work undertaken in his research group on the geometries, properties, and reactions of chemical systems using highly accurate ab initio quantum chemical techniques. Many of these papers have predicted, or forced a reinterpretation of, experimental results. He is the author of more than a thousand scientific publications, the majority appearing in the Journal of Chemical Physics or the Journal of the American Chemical Society.[7] He was awarded the American Chemical Society Award in Pure Chemistry in 1979 "for the development of computational quantum chemistry into a reliable quantitative field of chemistry and for prolific exemplary calculations of broad chemical interest".[8] In 1992, he was awarded the Centenary Medal of the Royal Society of Chemistry, London, with a citation that included "the first theoretical chemist successfully to challenge the accepted conclusion of a distinguished experimental group for a polyatomic molecule, namely methylene." [9] He is also an active Protestant Christian educator who regularly speaks in front of Christian youth groups and the public on science/faith issues. In 2003, he published Science and Christianity: Conflict or Coherence?,[10] a collection of essays and talks on the subject. He is the founder of the Christian Faculty Forum at University of Georgia.[11] ControversyOn January 25. 2008, he presented a lecture titled 'Big Bang, Stephen Hawking and God'[12] at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. The lecture implied the futility of religions other than Christianity as a way to God, and promoted Intelligent Design. This evoked a response[13][14] from secular students in the form of handbills[15] distributed to the audience of more than 500 student and professors. The handbills described his speech unscientific and therefore out-of-context for the largest technology festival of Asia: Techfest 2008. Schaefer is often cited as an example of the Discovery Institute inflating the academic credentials and affiliations of prominent intelligent design advocates. The institute prominently and frequently mentions the Nobel Prize in connection with Schaefer,[5][16][17] referring to him as a "five-time nominee for the Nobel Prize" despite the fact that Nobel Prize nominations remain confidential for fifty years. Intelligent Design critic Barbara Forrest, Glenn Branch and Reed Cartwright allege that in elevating mere speculation to a fact, the Discovery Institute is inflating his reputation.[18][19] Publications, books, lectures
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