Dr. Henry F. Schaefer III was born in Grand Rapids, MI in 1944. He received his B.S. in chemical physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1966) and Ph.D. in chemical physics from Stanford University (1969). For 18 years (1969-1987) he served as a professor of chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. During the 1979-1980 academic year he was also Wilfred T. Doherty Professor of Chemistry and inaugural Director of the Institute for Theoretical Chemistry at the University of Texas, Austin. Since 1987 Dr. Schaefer has been Graham Perdue Professor of Chemistry and Director of the Center for Computational Quantum Chemistry at the University of Georgia. His other academic appointments include Professeur of d'Echange at the University of Paris (1977) and Gastprofessur at the Eidgenossische Technische Hochshule (ETH), Zurich (1994, 1995, 1997). He is the author of more than 800 scientific publications, the majority appearing in the Journal of Chemical Physics or the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Critical to Professor Schaefer's scientific success has been a brilliant array of students and coworkers; including 39 undergraduate researchers who have published papers, 53 Ph.D. students, 38 postdoctoral researchers, and 29 visiting professors who have spent substantial time with him. He has presented plenary lectures at more than 135 national or international scientific conferences. He has delivered endowed or named lectures or lecture series at twenty major universities and is the recipient of four honorary degrees. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the London-based journal Molecular Physics and the President of the World Association of Theoretically Oriented Chemists. His service to the chemical community includes the chairmanship of the American Chemical Society's Division of Physical Chemistry (1992). His major awards include the American Chemical Society Award in Pure Chemistry (1979), The American Chemical Society Leo Hendrik Baekeland Award (1983), the Schrodinger Medal (1990), and the Centenary Medal of the Royal Society of Chemistry (1992). From 1981-1997 Dr. Schaefer was the sixth most highly cited chemist in the world; out of a total of 628,000 chemists whose research was cited. His research involves the use of state-of-the-art computational hardware and theoretical methods to solve important problems in molecular quantum mechanics. Dr. Schaefer is an elder and Sunday School teacher at Faith Presbyterian Church in Watkinsville, which he attends with his wife, Karin, and children Ted, Rebecca and Caleb.
This lecture relates Dr. Schaefer's personal journey from Berkeley Professor to Christian and some ensuing discoveries relating the Christian faith to the world of the intellect. He was quoted by U.S. News and World Report (Dec. 23, 1991) as saying: "The significance and joy in my science comes in the occasional moments of discovering something new and saying to myself, 'So that's how God did it!' My goal is to understand a little corner of God's plan." He has written a number of essays about the integration of his faith with his research. Some of them can be found at: http://www.leaderu.com/offices/schaefer/
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