One of the world’s most important theoretical chemists, Hiroshi Nakatsuji, was awarded the honorary medal “De scientia et humanitate optime meritis” of the Czech Academy of Sciences. This award has been granted since 1996 to outstanding domestic and foreign personalities for particularly meritorious activity in the field of science and humanitarian ideas.

“I greatly appreciate the opportunity to collaborate with Czech and Slovak scientists. Science is to a certain extent competition, but scientific cooperation and friendship is much more important. Precisely our collaboration with the Czech chemical community provides terrific results and shifts the boundaries of knowledge,” said Professor Hiroshi Nakatsuji when accepting the medal, who has cooperated with Czech scientists for a number of years. He therefore accepted the award on the occasion of the 7^th Japanese-Czech-Slovak Symposium, which he helped to found in 2005.

Professor Hiroshi Nakatsuji when accepting the medal in the study of the President of the Czech Academy of Sciences

The Analytical Solution of Schrödinger Equations

Hiroshi Nakatsuji is the Director of the Quantum Chemistry Research Institute at theKyoto Technoscience Center in Japan and is one of the leading world personalities of theoretical chemistry. His greatest scientific contributions include the discovery of the precise analytical solution of Schrödinger equations and relativistic Dirac-Coulomb Hamiltonians. With his discovery, he overturned the general method of analytical solution after 80 years of “dogma” that the basic equations of quantum mechanics can be resolved precisely analytically only for the four simplest model systems (particles in a potential well, an atom of hydrogen, a rigid rotor and harmonic vibrator).

Medal for Hiroshi Nakatsuji

The other areas of the interest of Professor Nakatsuji include the study of the excited and ionized states of molecules. His studies of wave mechanics “without waves” also drew great attention, i.e. a more precise solution of the second-order density matrix with the use of a wave function.

Hiroshi Nakatsuji has published over 550 original articles, which have more than 15,000 citations (H-index 59). He is a member and the General Secretary of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Sciences, a member of WATOC, the laureate of a number of awards and editor of leading global journals.

Prepared by Dušan Brinzaník, the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the CAS, in cooperation with Jan Martinek, Department of Media Communication of the Head Office of the CAS
Photo: Pavlína Jáchimová, Division of the External Relations of the CAO of the CAS