February 13, 2003

Pople receives Knighthood from Queen of England

Nobel laureate, Board of Trustees Professor named on 2003 New Year’s Honors List

John Pople, Nobel laureate and Board of Trustees Professor of Chemistry, has been awarded the Insignia of a Knight Commander of the Civil Division of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in the Queen’s 2003 New Year’s Honors List.

The award of a Knighthood recognizes John Pople’s extraordinary contribution in the field of chemistry.

The honor of Knighthood dates back to medieval chivalry, from which also comes the method used in the United Kingdom of conferring a Knighthood by the touch of a sword known as the accolade.

Knight Commander (KBE) is a distinction within the realm of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, which was founded in 1917, initially to recognize service by civilians in the First World War. This award now honors civilians and service personnel for public service or outstanding contribution to society.

Pople was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1998 for his pioneering contributions in developing computational methods making possible the theoretical study of molecules, their properties, and how they act together in chemical reactions. To make his computational techniques easily accessible to researchers, Pople designed the GAUSSIAN computer program used by thousands of chemists.

He has received numerous other awards and honors, including the 2002 Copley Medal from the Royal Society, an honorary doctorate from Cambridge University in 2001, the American Chemical Society’s 1998 Award in Theoretical Chemistry, and the Wolf Prize in 1992, considered equivalent to the Nobel Prize.

Pople has been a Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a member of the American Chemical Society, a Fellow of the American Physical Society and a Fellow of the Royal Society, London.

Born in the United Kingdom, Pople is a British citizen. He received his Ph.D. in mathematics at Cambridge in 1951. He became professor of chemical physics at Carnegie-Mellon University in 1964, an adjunct professor of chemistry at Northwestern in 1986 and Board of Trustees Professor at Northwestern in 1993.