Theoretical chemistry symposia

I would like to gratefully acknowledge the help I received from various colleagues. In particular, I want to thank W. Kutzelnigg for information on the Theoretical Chemistry Symposia and for various articles in which he looks back on the history of quantum chemistry. I want to thank H.-W. PreuE for annotated reprints of his early work and H. Kuhn for information on his work with the analog computer. I am also grateful to Frank-Dieter Kuchta who helped to search for essential data in DFG reports. 

In the middle of the 1970s, experimentalists realized that theoretical treatments had made great progress and renewed their interest in cooperation or in challenging the theoreticians. At the 1976 Theoretical Chemistry Symposium, for example, Christoph Schlier (Freiburg), an expert on molecular beam experiments, presented his talk on Scattering Collision Experiments—And What We Always Would Have Liked To Know About It from Theoretical Chemistry. Similarly, Peter Toennies (Gottingen) had approached theoretical chemists on this subject before. 

Chemie, presented at the 31st Theoretical Chemistry Symposium, Loccum, Germany, 1995. 

J.D. Goddard and R.C. Mawhinney, Program and Abstracts 12th Canadian Symposium on Theoretical Chemistry, August 6-11, 1995, Fredericton, Canada, p. 80. 

Charles Coulson, 4, "A History of Quantum Theory and Applications in Chemistry," 12-page typescript of after-dinner speech given August 16, 1971, at the Fourth Canadian Symposium on Theoretical Chemistry,... 

Rode, B. M. Communicated at the 10th Symposium on Theoretical Chemistry, Sem-mering, Austria (1974). 

S.H. Bertz, A Mathematical Model of Molecular Complexity. A Collection of Papers from a Symposium Held at the University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, U.S.A, 18-22 April 1983 (R.B. King, Editor) in "Studies in Physical and Theoretical Chemistry",Vol 28, Elsevier Science Publishers B.V., Amsterdam,... 

Theoretical and Applied Approaches in Analytical Chemistry. Symposium Series 488. 

At the Montreal symposium, it was decided to hold the third conference in the series in 1969 at the University of Toronto and to have the conference, like the Montreal meeting, organized by two cochairs from different institutions, a tradition that has been maintained by all subsequent symposia in the series. The Toronto symposium was organized by Richard Bader (McMaster University) and Imre Csizmadia (University of Toronto). Like for the first two symposia, the list of invited speakers included a large number of chemists from abroad. Despite its name, the Canadian Symposium on Theoretical Chemistry is an international conference. Typically about 70% of the invited speakers are from abroad and more than 60% of the participants are from 15 or more countries other than Canada. Attendance is generally in the range of 160-220 registrants. 

The fourth symposium, organized by Gulzari Malli (Simon Fraser University) and Bob Snider (University of British Columbia) was held in 1971 on UBC s beautiful campus in Vancouver. Plans for the fifth symposium in the nation s capital, Ottawa, were modified when the First International Congress of Quantum Chemistry was organized in 1973 in Menton, France. David Bishop (University of Ottawa) and Vedene Smith (Queen s University) organized the fifth symposium in Ottawa in 1974. The shift from a biennial to a triennial conference established a natural rotation between the American Conference on Theoretical Chemistry,18 the Canadian Symposium on Theoretical Chemistry, and the International Congress of Quantum Chemistry. This rotation has continued without interruption for more than two decades. 

As indicated in Table 1, the Canadian Symposia on Theoretical Chemistry (CSTC) have continued to flourish more than 30 years after the original conference organized by Fraser Birss and Serafin Fraga. Amid the splendid scenery of the Rockies, it was decided at the Seventh Canadian Symposium on Theoretical Chemistry in 1980 in Banff, Alberta, that the two cochairs should be chosen 6 years in advance. This policy has helped to facilitate future planning and to ensure the continuation of the strong traditions associated with the CSTC. Thus, at the symposium in 1995 in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Fred McCourt (University of Waterloo) and Jim Wright (Carleton University) were chosen to organize the fourteenth symposium in 2001, an auspicious date for computational chemistry. 

Figure 2 Andre Bandrauk, Roald Hoffmann, Gerhard Herzberg and Russell Boyd at the Eighth Canadian Symposium on Theoretical Chemistry in Halifax.

The 5 lifetime membership fee was levied to cover the roughly 300 cost of incorporation. At any one time, the board consists of the cochairs of the most recent Canadian Symposium on Theoretical Chemistry and the cochairs of the next two symposia. 

In 1964 Birss and Fraga finally got a real computer, an IBM 1620, which they operated themselves, first with paper tape and finally with cards. As theoreticians they did not have much of an identity within the Department of Chemistry and therefore with Gunning s approval they formed the Division of Theoretical Chemistry. To make the division better known, they organized a conference in 1965 called the Alberta Symposium on Theoretical Chemistry. Fraga recalls that the budget was really small about 35 for accommodation... 

A. D. Bandrauk and R. J. Boyd,/. Phys. Chem., 88, 4787 (1984). Eighth Canadian Symposium on Theoretical Chemistry. 

This chapter s mention of the Second Canadian Symposium on Theoretical Chemistry and the hugely popular world s exposition, Expo 67, which were held contemporaneously in Montreal in the summer of 1967, brings back fond memories for one editor. The Canadian symposium was the first scientific conference that DBB ever attended. Although proudly bearing the same Scottish last name, the editor and author share no known familial relationship. 

Yves G. Smeyers and Sylvio Canuto, Proceedings of the Ninth Brazilian Symposium of Theoretical Chemistry, held 16-19 November 1997, Caxambu, Brazil, in THEO-CEIEM, 464 (2-3), Elsevier, Amsterdam, Neth., 1999. 

Developed from a symposium sponsored by the Divisions of Inorganic Chemistry and of Physical Chemistry of the American Chemical Society and the Division of Physical and Theoretical Chemistry of the Canadian Society for Chemistry at the Third Chemical Congress of North America (195 th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society), Toronto, Ontario, Canada,... 

Balaban, A. T. Paper presented at the 6th Symposium on Theoretical Chemistry, Bad Ischl (Austria) 6—10 April 1970. 

J. R. Flick and S. E. B. Petrie, Studies in Physical and Theoretical Chemistry, 10, 145-163 (1978). (Volume title Structure and Properties of Amorphous Polymers. Edited by A. G. Walton. Contains the Proceedings of the Second Symposium on Macromolecules, held in Cleveland, Ohio, October 31-November 2, 1978). 

Most work on the integral Eq. (3) has utilized an iterative method of Svartholm [4,5] for solving it. The integral equation was first applied to He and hJ by Roy McWeeny and Charles Coulson [6,7] during McWeeny s doctoral work. At the 5th Canadian Symposium on Theoretical Chemistry, Ottawa, 1974, McWeeny delivered a tribute to Coulson who had passed away in January of that year. In that lecture, McWeeny described how he felt when he was first assigned the project by Coulson ... 

Theoretical chemistry was officially recognized as a branch of science in France a half-century ago. In April 1948 an international symposium organized in Paris under the auspices of the CNRS and the Rockefeller Foundation offered French chemists the opportunity to interact with the world leaders in this new science, including C. A. Coulson, J. A. A. Ketelaar, H. C. Longuet-Higgins, and R. S. Mulliken. In addition, the first chair entitled theoretical chemistry ... 

Bright, F.V. and McNally, M.E.P. (Eds.). 1992. Supercritical Fluid Technology Theoretical and Applied Approaches in Analytical Chemistry. Symposium Series No. 488. American Chemical Society, Washington, DC. 

U. Mayer, Ions and Molecules in Solution, A collection of invited papers presented at the session lectures and microsymposia during the 6th International Symposium on Solute-Solute-Solvent Interactions, Minoo, Japan, 4-10 July 1982 (eds N. Tanaka, H. Ohtaki and R. Tamamushi) Studies in Physical and Theoretical Chemistry, vol. 27, 219, Elsevier Science Publishers B.V., Amsterdam U. Mayer, V. Gutmann and W. Gerger, Monatsh. Chem., 1975, 106, 1235. 

Novaro, 1973] O. Novaro. Comments on the group theoretical justification of the aufbau scheme. International Journal of Quantum Chemistry (Symposium), 7, 23-33, 1973. 

The impetus of this book was a symposium of the same title that I organized for the American Chemical Society meeting in Las Vegas in August, 1980. I am grateful to the Subdivision of Theoretical Chemistry for suggesting this symposium and to the Division of Physical Chemistry for an invitation to organize it. The book... 

Hosoya, H. Proceedings of the 2nd Japan-China Symposium on Theoretical Chemistry, Kyoto, Japan, 1992 pp 81-82. 

Hughes, E. D., (1959). Theoretical Organic Chemistry. International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry Section of Organic Chemistry. (The Kekule Symposium.) London Butterworths. 

---