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Tribute to the Research and Professional Career of Reinhard Schinke It gives us much pleasure to have the opportunity to write this tribute as part of a Festschrift for our good friend and outstanding scientist Reinhard Schinke on the occasion of his 60th birthday. Through our mutual research interests and collaborations, we have had the opportunity to know Reinhard and appreciate his enjoyment of life and deep interests in chemical dynamics. Both have impacted us enormously. We hope our brief tribute provides adequate testimony of both his personal and scientific contributions to theoretical and computational chemical physics. Reinhard has spent most of his life in and near Go¨ttingen, Germany. He was born in Hardegesen, a small village just outside Go¨ttingen, where he received his elementary education. The high school he attended was in the nearby small city of Northeim. For his undergraduate studies, he went to the University of Go¨ttingen, obtaining a degree in physics. The research for his undergraduate diploma, entitled “Vibrational Excitation of Diatomic Molecules in Classical S-Matrix Theory”, was performed under the direction of Peter Toennies. After these studies, Reinhard received his Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the University of Kaiserslautern, under the direction of H. Kru¨ger. The title of his thesis is “Calculation of Differential and Integral Electronic Excitation Cross Sections for Proton-H Scattering”. After completing his Ph.D., Reinhard accepted a postdoctoral research assistantship at the IBM research laboratory in San Jose, California, where he worked with Bill Lester. After his postdoctoral studies, Reinhard returned to Go¨ttingen as a research assistant in 1980 with Hans Pauly in the
Department for Atomic and Molecular Interactions within the Max-Planck-Institut fu¨r Stro¨mungsforschung. He has spent his independent career at this Institut and the new one, that is, the Max-Planck-Institut fu¨r Dynamik and Selbstorganisation, both at the same location on Bunsenstrasse. After joining the MaxPlanck-Institut, he spent brief periods of time away as a visiting fellow of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1983) and as a visiting fellow at the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics (JILA) in Boulder, Colorado (1989). He received his Habilitation in theoretical chemistry from the Technical University of Munich (1988). As part of his professional activities, Reinhard is a member of the Advisory Boards of Chemical Physics Letters and Theoretical Chemistry Accounts. In the past, he served on the Advisory Board of the Journal of Chemical Physics. Reinhard’s research has involved chemical dynamics simulations, both classical and quantum, of chemical reactions and collisions with a goal of interpreting experiments, comparing with theories of chemical dynamics and kinetics, and obtaining an atomic-level understanding of chemical processes. His work has included (1) studies of the role and properties of resonances in unimolecular decomposition; (2) construction of potential energy surfaces for chemical dynamics simulations; (3) detailed investigations of the dynamics of photodissociation (his outstanding research for this topic encouraged him to write the excellent book Photodissociation Dynamics and also lead to a Max-Planck-Research prize in physics in 1994, which he shared with Hanna Reisler, University of Southern California, Los Angeles); (4) energy transfer in atom-molecule collisions (e.g.,
10.1021/jp105214z 2010 American Chemical Society Published on Web 09/09/2010
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an understanding and interpretation of rotational rainbows); (5) investigations and analyses of highly excited vibrational motion (periodic orbits, bifurcations, etc.) for molecules such as HCO, HCP, HOCl; this work interfaces importantly with his studies of resonances in unimolecular dissociation; (6) atom and molecule scattering from solid surfaces; and (7) an understanding of the nonstatistical relative populations of ozone isotopes in the stratosphere. An additional important contribution from Reinhard’s research are his comparisons of classical and quantum dynamics, which have provided a deeper understanding of when classical mechanics is appropriate for simulating chemical dynamics. The book Photodissociation Dynamics, written by Reinhard, is a very important contribution to the chemical dynamics community. It describes in detail different theoretical approaches for calculating the dynamics, including analyses of their accuracy and applicability. Extensive comparisons are made between theory and experiment. The book is extensively used, since the detailed discussions of theoretical methods are instructive for many other dynamical processes. Ju¨rgen Troe from Go¨ttingen University met with Reinhard in the late 1970s when, together with Fritz Peter Scha¨fer and Ju¨rgen Wolfrum, he established a collaborative research center (Sonderforschungsbereich) at Go¨ttingen on the “Photochemistry with Lasers”. Reinhard joined this center for 15 years in projects together with Hans Pauly. He continued to be a member of the subsequent Sonderforschungsbereich on “Molecular Mechanisms of Unimolecular Processes” for the next 12 years until 2004. This long period of collaboration gave ample opportunity to discuss all types of aspects of unimolecular processes, particularly of small molecules such as NO2, HOCl, and O3. Detailed experiments on the excited state dynamics, spectroscopy, and dissociation were performed at Go¨ttingen, and Ju¨rgen and Reinhard both were interested in the establishment of a rigorous theoretical link between ab initio potentials, dynamics on these potentials, and kinetic observables of these experiments. Resonances, fluctuations of product distributions, and dissociative lifetimes were central issues of many discussions. When the oxygen heavy isotope anomaly in atmospheric chemistry was discovered and, in Konrad Mauersberger’s work, was attributed to elementary processes in ozone atmospheric photochemical kinetics, quite naturally, Reinhard was attracted to this difficult problem. Numerous discussions between Reinhard and Ju¨rgen, combining dynamical and kinetic aspects, advanced the understanding, although a complete insight into the enigmatic behavior of this system is still lacking. The related isotope exchange in the reaction between oxygen atoms and molecules was treated theoretically and computationally by Reinhard in impressive detail to determine an accurate potential energy surface, from electronic structure calculations, which was used for both quantum and classical simulations of O + O2 association, O3 dissociation, and energy transfer from vibra-
tionally and rotationally excited O3. Last, but not least, he provided the most advanced theoretical confirmation of the chaperone (or radical complex) mechanism in the recombination of atoms with diatomic molecules, a process suggested and documented in the laboratory by Ju¨rgen’s group at Go¨ttingen University. Of course, Reinhard studied this phenomenon for the combination of oxygen atoms and molecules forming ozone. Though they were aware of each other’s research contributions, Bill Hase and Reinhard Schinke did not become acquainted until they met at the Gordon Conference on Molecular Energy Transfer held in 1989 at the Brewster Academy in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, where Reinhard presented a lecture. They met again in 1993 at the third World Congress of Theoretical Organic Chemists held in Toyohashi, Japan, and established a strong personal friendship at that time. This was about the time Reinhard initiated his studies of compound state resonances in unimolecular dissociation, work that has had a profound impact on our understanding of both the dynamics and theory of unimolecular reactions. Reinhard invited Bill to spend six weeks in Go¨ttingen during the summer of 1994 to collaborate with Reinhard’s MPI research group and participate in the interpretation of their exciting calculations. Bill returned again for four weeks in the summer of 1995 to continue these collaborations. Bill published one research article with Reinhard, but maybe more importantly, together they wrote two chapters describing their contributions to and understandings of unimolecular reaction rate theory and the new insights obtained from their research; that is, “State-Specific Dynamics of Unimolecular Dissociation”, a chapter in ComprehensiVe Chemical Kinetics, Vol. 39, Unimolecular Kinetics Part 1. The Reaction Step, edited by N. J. B. Green; Elsevier Science: Amsterdam, The Netherlands (2003), pp. 105-242; and “Role of Computational Chemistry in the Development of Unimolecular Rate Theory”, a chapter in Theory and Applications of Computational Chemistry: The First 40 Years, edited by C. E. Dykstra, G. Frenking, K. S. Kim, and G. Scuseria; Elsevier: New York (2005), pp. 397-423. In closing, we wish our friend Reinhard Schinke the very best for the future, wherever his paths (i.e., Wanderwege) may take him. Ju¨rgen and Reinhard will continue their interactions and discussions, many of which take place at the Saturday Farmer’s Market in Go¨ttingen. Bill and Reinhard will continue their mutual trips to Go¨ttingen and Lubbock (and New Mexico) for hiking, biking, and just good times! Many questions remain regarding the fundamental dynamics of unimolecular reactions and, who knows, maybe our discussions and adventures will resolve some of these issues.
William L. Hase Ju¨rgen Troe JP105214Z
