Basic Molecular Quantum Mechanics

Steven. A. Adelman (Steve) was born and grew up on the West Side of Chicago. He developed a passion for science in early childhood becoming especially fascinated by human evolution. Gradually his interests shifted to Chemistry, Physics, and Mathematics. Thus, he was led to obtain a Ph.D. in 1972 from Harvard University in Theoretical Chemical Physics, the branch of chemistry most closely aligned with physics and mathematics. In his Ph.D. thesis he treated several problems in atomic and molecular physics. He chose as his thesis advisor future Chemistry Nobel Laureate Dudley R. Herschbach whose imaginative reactive molecular beam scattering experiments helped found the parent field of gas phase chemical reaction dynamics, a field which revolutionized the traditional field of chemical kinetics. After receiving his Ph.D. Steve took post-doctoral fellowships first at MIT and then at the University of Chicago to learn statistical mechanics, the area of theoretical physics concerned with statistical determinations of the equilibrium and non-equilibrium behaviors of systems with many particles. He joined Purdue University as an Assistant Professor in 1975, became a full Professor in 1981, and is now Professor Emeritus of Chemistry.

His current research deals with using a novel reformulation of the statistical mechanical theory of irreversible processes to generalize the parent field of gas phase chemical reaction dynamics to the much more complex and broadly impactful daughter field of condensed matter chemical reaction dynamics, especially reaction dynamics occurring on solid surfaces and in liquid solutions. For this work Steve has garnered thousands of citations and many speaker invitations, including keynote speaker invitations, at meetings in several fields world-wide.

Adelman has been awarded both Alfred P. Sloan and John Simon Guggenheim Memorial fellowships. He is a fellow of both the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has been listed in Marquis' Who's who in America every year since 1985 and has been listed four times in Marquis' Who's who in the world.