Per-Olov Löwdin
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 Photograph of Per-Olov Löwdin. |
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| Born | October 28, 1916 Uppsala, Sweden |
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| Died | October 6, 2000 Uppsala, Sweden |
| Residence |  Sweden,  USA |
| Nationality | Swedish |
| Field | Physicist |
| Institution | University of Uppsala University of Florida |
| Alma mater | Uppsala University |
| Academic advisor | Paul Dirac  |
| Known for | Molecular orbital calculations Quantum chemistry Perturbation theory |
| Notable prizes | Niels Bohr Medal (1987) |
Per-Olov Löwdin (born October 28, 1916 in Uppsala, Sweden, died October 6, 2000) was a Swedish physicist, professor at the University of Uppsala from 1960 to 1983, and in parallel at the University of Florida until 1993.
A former graduate student under Paul Dirac, Löwdin formulated in 1955 the symmetric orthogonalization scheme for molecular orbital calculations. This scheme is the basis of the zero-differential overlap (ZDO) approximation used in semiempirical theories.
He is also credited with the use of fat symbols for matrices, making easy the derivation of several theorems of quantum mechanics.
The famous 'Löwdin pairing theorem' used in ROHF, UHF and RES-GVB theories is not his. According to himself, George G. Hall and King made the formal proposition after an informal suggestion by Löwdin.
His partitioning technique for quantum chemistry problems is best appreciated through the series of 14 papers on Perturbation Theory published between 1963 and 1971.
He was also a very active teacher, starting the Summer Schools of Quantum Chemistry at Uppsala around 1958. In 1959-1960 Löwdin started the Quantum Theory Project at the University of Florida as a sister project to the Uppsala Quantum Chemistry Group. In 1964 he was joined by John C. Slater from MIT. The International Winter Institutes (held initially at Sanibel Island, and later at Gainesville) provided the initiation of hundreds of Latin American young scientists during the eighties and nineties. In 1960 he founded the Sanibel Symposium in conjunction with the Winter Institute. They have been held every year since 1960 with the 47th symposium to be be held in 2007.
Löwdin was a member of the committee for the Nobel Prize in physics for many years, and the founder of the International Journal of Quantum Chemistry and of the series Advances in Quantum Chemistry. He was a member of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science.
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