Photographs from the Papers of Robert G. Parr

Robert G. Parr was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1921. He attended Brown University and received a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from the University of Minnesota in 1947, where he studied under Bryce Crawford. He subsequently taught at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, Johns Hopkins University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Parr was an important theoretical chemist best known for contributing to the formulation of what came to be called the Pariser-Parr-Pople (PPP) method for predicting electronic spectra, in conjunction with his pupil Rudolph Pariser and the research of Sir John Pople. In the latter part of his career he devoted his energy to the Density Functional Theory. Parr's accomplishments include writing over 200 scientific articles, supervising over 100 doctoral and post-doctoral students, and membership in several professional organizations including the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science, where he served as President. Parr also received honorary degrees from the University of Leuven in Belgium (1986) and Jagiellonian University in Poland (1996).