Trinity University chemistry professor Aaron W. Harrison, Ph.D., recently wrote a piece for Yahoo!News that examines the work of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist who led the Los Alamos laboratory during the Manhattan Project and helped develop the first atomic bomb. Harrison digs into Oppenheimer’s early contributions to quantum mechanics, which he says formed the bedrock of modern quantum chemistry. “As a physical chemist, Oppenheimer’s work on molecular quantum mechanics plays a major role in both my teaching and my research,” Harrison says in the piece.
Oppenheimer collaborated with his research adviser, Max Born, in 1927 to publish a paper entitled “On the Quantum Theory of Molecules,” which outlined what is commonly referred to as the Born-Oppenheimer approximation. While the name credits both Oppenheimer and his adviser, most historians recognize that the theory is mostly Oppenheimer’s work, per Harrison.
“The Born-Oppenheimer approximation offers a way to simplify the complex problem of describing molecules at the atomic level,” he says. Learn more by reading the entire article here.