Samuel Francis Boys

This article is about the English mathematical chemist commonly known as Frank Boys. For the English cricketer, see Frank Cecil Boys.

Frank Boys
Born
Samuel Francis Boys

(1911-12-20)20 December 1911
Pudsey, Yorkshire, England
Died16 October 1972(1972-10-16) (aged 60)
Cambridge, England
Alma mater
Known forGaussian orbitals
ab initio quantum chemistry methods
AwardsFRS (1972)[1]
Scientific career
FieldsTheoretical chemistry
Institutions
Doctoral advisorMartin Lowry
John Lennard-Jones
Doctoral studentsNicholas C. Handy[2][3]

Samuel Francis (Frank) Boys (20 December 1911 – 16 October 1972) was a British theoretical chemist.[1][4][5]

Education

Boys was born in Pudsey, Yorkshire, England. He was educated at the Grammar School in Pudsey and then at Imperial College London, whence he graduated in Chemistry in 1932. He then embarked on postgraduate study at Trinity College, Cambridge, supervised first by Martin Lowry,[6] and then, after Lowry's death in 1936, by John Lennard-Jones. He awarded a PhD in 1937 from Cambridge, for a thesis on "The Quantum Theory of Optical Rotation".[7]

Career

In 1938, Boys was appointed an Assistant Lecturer in Mathematical Physics at Queen's University Belfast. He spent the whole of the Second World War working on explosives research with the Ministry of Supply at the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich, with Lennard-Jones as his supervisor. After the war, Boys accepted an ICI Fellowship at Imperial College, London. In 1949, he was appointed to a Lectureship in theoretical chemistry at the University of Cambridge. He remained at Cambridge until his death. He was only elected to a Cambridge College Fellowship at University College, now Wolfson College, Cambridge, shortly before his death.

Boys is best known for the introduction of Gaussian orbitals into ab initio quantum chemistry.[8][9] Almost all basis sets used in computational chemistry now employ these orbitals.[10] Frank Boys was also one of the first scientists to use digital computers for calculations on polyatomic molecules.

An International Conference, entitled "Molecular Quantum Mechanics: Methods and Applications" was held in memory of S. Francis Boys and in honour of Isaiah Shavitt in September 1995 at St Catharine's College, Cambridge.[11][9]

Awards and honours

Boys was a member of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1972, a few months before his death.[1]

References

  1. ^ a b c Coulson, C. A. (1973). "Samuel Francis Boys 1911-1972". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. 19: 94–115. doi:10.1098/rsbm.1973.0004.
  2. ^ "Death of Professor Nicholas C. Handy, FRS". University of Cambridge. 8 October 2012. Archived from the original on 8 April 2013.
  3. ^ Clary, David C.; Knowles, Peter J.; Tozer, David J. (2015). "Nicholas Charles Handy 17 June 1941 – 2 October 2012". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. 61: 145–160. doi:10.1098/rsbm.2015.0002. ISSN 0080-4606.
  4. ^ Boys, S. F.; Corner, J. (1949). "The Structure of the Reaction Zone in a Flame". Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences. 197 (1048): 90. Bibcode:1949RSPSA.197...90B. doi:10.1098/rspa.1949.0052.
  5. ^ Boys, S. F. (1950). "Electronic Wave Functions. I. A General Method of Calculation for the Stationary States of Any Molecular System". Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences. 200 (1063): 542–554. Bibcode:1950RSPSA.200..542B. doi:10.1098/rspa.1950.0036. S2CID 122709395.
  6. ^ Handy, N. C.; Pople, J. A.; Shavitt, I. (1996). "Samuel Francis Boys". The Journal of Physical Chemistry. 100 (15): 6007. doi:10.1021/jp963465d. he started his Ph.D. work on the quantum theory of optical rotation under Professor T. M. Lowry
  7. ^ Samuel Francis Boys at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  8. ^ Levine, Ira N. (1991). Quantum Chemistry (4th ed.). Prentice-Hall. p. 462. ISBN 0-205-12770-3. Boys proposed in 1950 the use of Gaussian-type functions ... for the atomic orbitals in an LCAO wave function.
  9. ^ a b The scientific contributions of S. F. Boys by Robert G. Parr, International Journal of Quantum Chemistry, 21/27 January 1973
  10. ^ Levine, Ira N. (1991). Quantum Chemistry (4th ed.). Prentice-Hall. p. 466. ISBN 0-205-12770-3. most current molecular ab initio calculations use contracted-Gaussian basis sets.
  11. ^ The lost Boys of quantum chemistry by Dermot Martin, Chemistry World, 30 July 2010