Jan Almlöf, Supercomputer Institute Researcher in Chemistry & Chemical Physics Dies at Age 50

It is with great regret that we announce that Professor Jan Almlöf passed away on January 17, 1996.

Jan Erik Almlöf was born in Malung, Sweden on April 1, 1945. He received the degree of Fil. kand at the University of Uppsala in Sweden in 1967 and graduated from the same university with the degree of Fil. lic. in 1971, with thesis on the crystal structures of hydrates of perchloric acid.

He received the degree of "Philosophia Doctor" from the University of Uppsala in 1974 with a thesis on hydrogen bonding. His research mentors were Professors Ivar Olovsson and Björn Roos.

He entered a chair in Theoretical Chemistry at the University of Oslo in Norway in 1976, where he began a career of teaching and research in computational physical chemistry, becoming Professor of Chemistry in 1982. In September 1985 he moved to the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis as Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Physics where he continued these pursuits. He was appointed a Fellow of the Supercomputer Institute, he taught both undergraduate and graduate courses, and he had 28 predoctoral (graduate and undergraduate) and 16 postdoctoral research students.

Professor Almlöf was highly regarded in the international scientific community for his accomplishments in advancing the theory of molecular structure and for his work in the development of efficient algorithms for carrying out calculations of the structures of molecules. His most widely known work is the development of so called "direct" quantum mechanical methods for calculating electronic wave functions and energies of molecules; these methods allow one to take advantage of the high speed of state-of-the-art computers even when the computer does not have enough memory to store all the intermediate calculations, and these methods have been widely used in many chemical companies and national laboratories, as well as by the academic research community. In 1993, he was awarded the Schrödinger Medal by the World Association of Theoretical Organic Chemists, in honor of his development of direct methods.

Professor Almlöf served on the advisory editorial boards of two international journals, the International Journal of Quantum Chemistry and Theoretica Chimica Acta. Almlöf was one of the initiators of the European Summer School in Quantum Chemistry and was a highly appreciated lecturer on integrals and SCF theory since the start of the school in 1989.

Professor Almlöf was engaged in collaborative research with Battelle Pacific Northwest Laboratory, Cray Research, Inc., IBM, NASA Ames Laboratory, and Sandia National Laboratory on both the development of new computational techniques for supercomputers and applications of these techniques to problems in chemical physics. He also had a long-standing collaboration with the University of Tromsø in Norway, where he was a frequent visitor.

Professor Almlöf died on January 17, 1996. He is survived by his wife Elisabeth, his sons Anders and Martin, and his daughter Mia.

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