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Richard F. W. Bader

by Susan J. Ainsworth
March 26, 2012 | A version of this story appeared in Volume 90, Issue 13

Richard F. W. Bader, 80, an emeritus professor of chemistry at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, died on Jan. 15.

Born in Kitchener, Ontario, Bader received a bachelor’s degree in 1953 and a master’s degree in 1955, both in chemistry from McMaster. He earned a Ph.D. in chemistry in 1958 at Massachusetts Institute of Technology under C. Gardner Swain and conducted postdoctoral research at Cambridge University with H. Christopher Longuet-Higgins.

Bader then accepted an assistant professorship at the University of Ottawa, where he published quantum chemistry’s first orbital symmetry rules. In 1963, he joined the McMaster chemistry faculty, remaining there until his retirement in 1996.

Credited with more than 200 articles and book chapters, as well as two books, Bader was an influential theoretical chemist who pioneered topological analyses of electron density distributions in molecules and solids. Bader’s quantum theory of atoms in molecules is widely used in quantum chemistry and solid-state physics. He was a member of ACS in 2005 and 2008.

Bader is survived by his wife, Pam; daughters, Carolyn Weber, Kimberly Longstreet, and Suzanne Bader; and one grandson.

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