Special Issue Preface Cite This: J. Phys. Chem. A 2019, 123, 3615−3616
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Tribute to William P. Reinhardt
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Published as part of The Journal of Physical Chemistry virtual special issue “William P. Reinhardt Festschrift”. Bill stayed on at Harvard and joined the faculty of the Department of Chemistry in 1967 as an Instructor in Chemistry. He was appointed Assistant Professor in 1969 and Associate Professor in 1972. In parallel with his activities as a faculty member, he was a Resident Tutor in Science and Mathematics in Lowell House at Harvard College, running a highly active, although informal, science table with biochemist and biophysicist Stephen C. Harrison. During his time at Harvard he supervised a number of students who went on to have distinguished careers in theoretical chemical physics, including Eric Heller, David Oxtoby, and Jimmie D. Doll. In 1974, Bill moved to the University of Colorado, Boulder, as a Full Professor in the Department of Chemistry and a Fellow of the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics. From 1977 to 1980 he served as cochairman of the Chemistry Department together with Carl Lineberger, both only in their early- to midthirties. During his time in Boulder, Bill pioneered research in semiclassical methods for treating molecular processes and the application of nonlinear dynamics and chaos theory to the understanding of energy transfer and chemical reactions. In 1984, Bill relocated back to the east coast and the Ivy League, and became a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania. He served again as a Department Chairman from 1985 to 1988. In 1985, he was a cofounder of the Telluride Summer Research Center in Telluride, Colorado. He served as the TSRC Director from 1986 to 1989 and was a participant for many years, often spending the entire summer in residence with his wife Katrina and their children James and Alexander. From the beginning, the workshops in Telluride were gatherings that catalyzed cutting-edge research in chemical theory, and they have grown into one of the most important institutions in the broader chemical sciences. In 1991, Bill moved to the west coast to become Professor of Chemistry at the University of Washington, Seattle; he became an Adjunct Professor of Physics in 1999. During this time, working in concert with colleagues at the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST, Gaithersberg) he introduced creative new theoretical approaches to suggest and interpret major experiments involving the newly discovered gaseous atomic Bose−Einstein condensate. This led to his work on special functions, which appears in the Digital Library of Mathematical Functions (DLMF), a NIST-NSF collaboration that he initiated. He remained on the faculty of the University of Washington until 2014, when he became an Emeritus Professor. Heading east again, Bill became an Adjunct Professor in the Institute of Physical Science and Technology at the University of Maryland, a position he held during 2014 and 2015. Today, Bill continues to work on a number of topics in the NIST Digital Library of Mathematical Functions. Bill has published over 210 papers covering an exceptionally broad range of topics, including atomic physics, many-body
Photo by James Reinhardt
I
t is our pleasure and privilege to coedit this Virtual Special Issue for our mentor, colleague, and friend, William P. Reinhardt. Bill is a remarkable person with broad interests in science, art, literature, and history among many others. Within the narrow slice of that pie corresponding to his research in theoretical chemical physics, we find a self-similarly broad distribution, with contributions ranging from atomic physics to dynamical systems, from molecular energy transfer to the geometry of phase space, and from the statistical mechanics of biological molecules to the fundamental quantum properties of Bose−Einstein condensates. All of this work is unified by a recurring theme, however: highly innovative and visual thinking about the underlying principles and a fluent two-way translation between formal mathematical structures (the complex plane, unstable periodic orbits and infinitely complicated homoclinic oscillations in phase space, and fractal geometry) and the physical-chemical world (atomic spectra, molecular dynamics, energy transfer, etc.). Bill is a serious and deep thinker with technical virtuosity in applied mathematics and numerical analysis. At the same time, he has a very visual and even artistic approach to science. And he possesses a rare ability to communicate both sides of this equation to his students, coworkers, and the scientific community. Bill Reinhardt was born on May 22, 1942 in San Francisco, California. He was largely educated in the public schools of Berkeley, California. He studied Chemistry in the College of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley, where he graduated with honors (1964) and was elected to Sigma Xi and Phi Beta Kappa. After college, Bill traveled east to Harvard University to pursue his graduate training in Chemical Physics in the research group of E. Bright Wilson, Jr., who was then for the first time accepting graduate students in the area of theoretical chemistry. His classmates in the Wilson Group included William H. (Bill) Miller, Frank Weinhold, and Phillip Johnson. His graduate research focused on many-body Green’s functions. He completed his Ph.D. work in 1967 and was awarded his degree the Spring of 1968. © 2019 American Chemical Society
Published: May 2, 2019 3615
DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpca.9b01985 J. Phys. Chem. A 2019, 123, 3615−3616
Special Issue Preface
The Journal of Physical Chemistry A theory of electronic structure, scattering theory, numerical and analytic methods in applied mathematics, complex coordinates and analytic continuation, semiclassical methods, nonlinear dynamics, Hamiltonian chaos, quantum-classical correspondence, intramolecular dynamics and energy transfer, adiabatic theory, surface diffusion, quantum chaos, statistical mechanics and thermodynamic, electrochemistry, Bose−Einstein condensation, and nonlinear Schrodinger equations. He has garnered a long list of awards, including election to Fellowship in the American Physical Society, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Institute of Physics (UK), and Phi Beta Kappa. In addition, Bill has trained many scientists who have gone on to have successful careers in many areas of science. His communication skills are reflected in the long list of talks given to audiences ranging from highly technical specialists to the general public and school children. Now retired, Bill Reinhardt lives in Santa Fe, NM, with his wife Katrina.
Craig C. Martens University of California, Irvine
David J. Masiello
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University of Washington
ASSOCIATED CONTENT
S Supporting Information *
The Supporting Information is available free of charge on the ACS Publications website at DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpca.9b01985. Table of contents for the William P. Reinhardt Festschrift (PDF)
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DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpca.9b01985 J. Phys. Chem. A 2019, 123, 3615−3616
