John Pople

Sir John Pople
Born	John Anthony Pople (1925-10-31)31 October 1925 Burnham-on-Sea, Somerset, England
Died	15 March 2004(2004-03-15) (aged 78) Chicago, Illinois, United States
Nationality	England
Fields	Theoretical chemistry Quantum chemistry Computational chemistry
Institutions	Bristol Aeroplane Company University of Cambridge Carnegie Mellon University Northwestern University National Physical Laboratory
Alma mater	University of Cambridge
Thesis	Lone Pair Electrons (1951)
Doctoral advisor	John Lennard-Jones
Doctoral students	A. David Buckingham Martin Head-Gordon Mark S. Gordon Krishnan Raghavachari
Known for	Computational methods in quantum chemistry
Notable awards	Mayhew Prize (1948) FRS (1961) Irving Langmuir Award (1970) Davy Medal (1988) Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1998) Copley Medal (2002)
Spouse	Joy Bowers (m. 1952)
Website www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1998/pople-bio.html

Sir John Anthony Pople, KBE FRS (31 October 1925 – 15 March 2004) was a theoretical chemist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Walter Kohn in 1998 for his development of computational methods in quantum chemistry.

Pople was born in Burnham-on-Sea, Somerset, England and attended the Bristol Grammar School. He won a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge in 1943. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1946. Between 1945 and 1947 he worked at the Bristol Aeroplane Company. He then returned to the University of Cambridge and was awarded his PhD in mathematics in 1951 on lone pair electrons.

After obtaining his Ph D, he was a research fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge and then from 1954 a lecturer in the mathematics faculty at Cambridge. In 1958, he moved to the National Physical Laboratory, near London as head of the new basics physics division. He moved to the United States of America in 1964, where he lived the rest of his life, though he retained British citizenship. Pople considered himself more of a mathematician than a chemist, but theoretical chemists consider him one of the most important of their number. In 1964 he moved to Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he had experienced a sabbatical in 1961 to 1962. In 1993 he moved to Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois where he was Trustees Professor of Chemistry until his death.