Gold Medal of the American Institute of Chemists Professor Henry F. Schaefer of the Department of Chemistry has received the highest honor of the American Institute of Chemists (AIC). The AIC Gold Medal is awarded in recognition of service to the science and profession of chemistry and chemical engineering. Schaefer obtained his PhD in Chemical Physics from Stanford University under supervision of John I. Brauman in 1969 for work with Frank E. Harris, and he started his academic career as an Assistant Professor at University of California, Berkeley in the same year. In 1987, he moved to University of Georgia where he has since served as the Graham Perdue Professor of Chemistry, and the Director of the Center for Computational Quantum Chemistry (CCQC). Schaefer was President of the World Association of Theoretical and Computational Chemists from 1996 to 2005, and over the course of his career has been granted numerous visiting professorships worldwide, He has long served the Division of Physical Chemistry of the American Chemical Society in diverse functions. Dr. Schaefer's research is focused on the development of theoretical and computational methods in quantum chemistry and on the application of such methods to contemporary problems in chemistry, including the structures, reactions, and spectroscopy of molecules as large as stacked base pairs and gallium nitride nanowires.
