Harry Wiener (Oct. 29, 1924 in

Vienna, Austria en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

– Nov. 8, 1998 in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

, USA) was an Austrian-American

chemist A chemist (from Greek ''chēm(ía)'' alchemy; replacing ''chymist'' from Medieval Latin ''alchemist'') is a scientist trained in the study of chemistry. Chemists study the composition of matter and its properties. Chemists carefully describe t ...

, physician and psychologist, a pioneer in cheminformatics and chemical graph theory, and a long-time employee at

Pfizer Pfizer Inc. ( ) is an American multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology corporation headquartered on 42nd Street in Manhattan, New York City. The company was established in 1849 in New York by two German entrepreneurs, Charles Pfizer ...

Education and career

Wiener was born in Vienna in 1924 to Jewish parents Joseph Wiener and Beile Wiener. His family emigrated to New York City, USA in 1941 by way of France and Portugal. Wiener attended Brooklyn College and received a BS in chemistry in 1945. Wiener attended Long Island College of Medicine and obtained an MD in 1949. Wiener was appointed to the management team at

in 1958 and remained at the company until 1995, when he retired.

Achievements

Wiener made important and fundamental contributions to the study of topological indices and established a correlation between the

Wiener index In chemical graph theory, the Wiener index (also Wiener number) introduced by Harry Wiener, is a topological index of a molecule, defined as the sum of the lengths of the shortest paths between all pairs of vertices in the chemical graph represen ...

and

boiling points The boiling point of a substance is the temperature at which the vapor pressure of a liquid equals the pressure surrounding the liquid and the liquid changes into a vapor. The boiling point of a liquid varies depending upon the surrounding envir ...

(hence

viscosity The viscosity of a fluid is a measure of its resistance to deformation at a given rate. For liquids, it corresponds to the informal concept of "thickness": for example, syrup has a higher viscosity than water. Viscosity quantifies the inte ...

and surface tension) of the paraffins. He laid the foundation of chemical graph theory, and built a bridge between

group theory In abstract algebra, group theory studies the algebraic structures known as group (mathematics), groups. The concept of a group is central to abstract algebra: other well-known algebraic structures, such as ring (mathematics), rings, field ...

graph theory In mathematics, graph theory is the study of ''graphs'', which are mathematical structures used to model pairwise relations between objects. A graph in this context is made up of '' vertices'' (also called ''nodes'' or ''points'') which are conn ...

, and chemistry. The Wiener index and its generalization, the

Hyper-Wiener index In chemical graph theory, the hyper-Wiener index or hyper-Wiener number is a topological index of a molecule, used in biochemistry. The hyper-Wiener index is a generalization introduced by Milan Randić of the concept of the Wiener index, introduc ...

, have been used in predicting antibacterial activity in drugs to modeling crystalline phenomena. The Wiener index plays an important role in

sociometry Sociometry is a quantitative method for measuring social relationships. It was developed by psychotherapist Jacob L. Moreno and Helen Hall Jennings in their studies of the relationship between social structures and psychological well-being, and u ...

and the theory of

social network A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for ...

s which was developed by

Christophe Soulé Christophe Soulé (born 1951) is a French mathematician working in arithmetic geometry. Education Soulé started his studies in 1970 at École Normale Supérieure in Paris. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Paris in 1979 under the sup ...

et al, as well as Gromov-Hyperbolicity Parameters. The Wiener index also plays an important role in Nanotechnology.

Personal life

Wiener married Charlotte Baran, a coworker at

, in 1982.

References

21st-century American chemists 1924 births 1998 deaths Brooklyn College alumni Pfizer people {{US-chemist-stub