Henry Stephen Rzepa (born 1950) is a chemist and Emeritus

Professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professors ...

of Computational chemistry at

Imperial College London Imperial College London (legally Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom. Its history began with Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, who developed his vision for a cu ...

Education

Rzepa was born in London in 1950, was educated at Wandsworth Comprehensive School, and then entered the chemistry department at

where he graduated in 1971. He stayed to do a

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

on the physical organic chemistry of

indole Indole is an aromatic heterocyclic organic compound In chemistry, organic compounds are generally any chemical compounds that contain carbon-hydrogen or carbon-carbon bonds. Due to carbon's ability to catenate (form chains with other c ...

s supervised by Brian Challis.

Career and research

After spending three years doing

postdoctoral research A postdoctoral fellow, postdoctoral researcher, or simply postdoc, is a person professionally conducting research after the completion of their doctoral studies (typically a PhD). The ultimate goal of a postdoctoral research position is to pu ...

at the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,07 ...

, Texas with Michael Dewar in the then emerging field of computational chemistry, he returned to Imperial College after being appointed a lecturer. He was one of the first to be appointed in the UK in the emerging subject of computational organic chemistry. he is Emeritus Professor of Computational Chemistry. His research interests directed towards combining different types of chemical information tools for solving structural, mechanistic and

stereochemical Stereochemistry, a subdiscipline of chemistry, involves the study of the relative spatial arrangement of atoms that form the structure of molecules and their manipulation. The study of stereochemistry focuses on the relationships between stereois ...

problems in organic, bioorganic, organometallic chemistry and

catalysis Catalysis () is the process of increasing the rate of a chemical reaction by adding a substance known as a catalyst (). Catalysts are not consumed in the reaction and remain unchanged after it. If the reaction is rapid and the catalyst recyc ...

, using techniques such as semiempirical

molecular orbital In chemistry, a molecular orbital is a mathematical function describing the location and wave-like behavior of an electron in a molecule. This function can be used to calculate chemical and physical properties such as the probability of findin ...

methods (the

MNDO MNDO, or Modified Neglect of Diatomic Overlap is a semi-empirical method for the quantum calculation of molecular electronic structure in computational chemistry. It is based on the Neglect of Diatomic Differential Overlap integral approximation. ...

family), Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy,

X-ray crystallography X-ray crystallography is the experimental science determining the atomic and molecular structure of a crystal, in which the crystalline structure causes a beam of incident X-rays to diffract into many specific directions. By measuring the angles ...

and ''

ab initio ''Ab initio'' ( ) is a Latin term meaning "from the beginning" and is derived from the Latin ''ab'' ("from") + ''initio'', ablative singular of ''initium'' ("beginning"). Etymology Circa 1600, from Latin, literally "from the beginning", from ab ...

'' quantum theories. Aware of the complex semantic issues involved in converging different areas of chemistry to address modern multidisciplinary problems, he started investigating the use of the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

as an information and integrating medium around 1987, focusing in 1994 on the

World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web ...

as having the most potential.

Peter Murray-Rust Peter Murray-Rust (born 1941) is a chemist currently working at the University of Cambridge. As well as his work in chemistry, Murray-Rust is also known for his support of open access and open data. Education He was educated at Bootham School ...

and he first introduced Chemical Markup Language (CML) in 1995 as a rich carrier of semantic chemical information and data; and they coined the term ''Datument'' as a

portmanteau A portmanteau word, or portmanteau (, ) is a blend of wordsdocument A document is a written, drawn, presented, or memorialized representation of thought, often the manifestation of non-fictional, as well as fictional, content. The word originates from the Latin ''Documentum'', which denotes a "teaching" o ...

s produced by traditional

academic publishing Academic publishing is the subfield of publishing which distributes academic research and scholarship. Most academic work is published in academic journal articles, books or theses. The part of academic written output that is not formally pu ...

methods to the Semantic Web ideals expressed by Tim Berners-Lee. His contributions to chemistry include exploration of

Möbius aromaticity In organic chemistry, Möbius aromaticity is a special type of aromaticity believed to exist in a number of organic molecules. In terms of molecular orbital theory these compounds have in common a monocyclic array of molecular orbitals in which th ...

, highlighted by the theoretical discovery of relatively stable forms of cyclic conjugated molecules which exhibit two and higher half-twists in the topology rather than just the single twist associated with Mobius systems (and hence possibly better termed

Johann Benedict Listing Johann Benedict Listing (25 July 1808 – 24 December 1882) was a German mathematician. J. B. Listing was born in Frankfurt and died in Göttingen. He first introduced the term "topology" to replace the older term "geometria situs" (also called ...

rings). He is responsible for unraveling the mechanistic origins of stereocontrol in a variety of

catalytic Catalysis () is the process of increasing the rate of a chemical reaction by adding a substance known as a catalyst (). Catalysts are not consumed in the reaction and remain unchanged after it. If the reaction is rapid and the catalyst recyc ...

polymerisation In polymer chemistry, polymerization (American English), or polymerisation (British English), is a process of reacting monomer molecules together in a chemical reaction to form polymer chains or three-dimensional networks. There are many for ...

reactions, including that of

lactide Lactide is the lactone cyclic ester derived by multiple esterification between two (usually) or more molecules from lactic acid (2-hydroxypropionic acid) or other hydroxy carboxylic acid. They are designated as dilactides, trilactides, etc., acco ...

to polylactide, a new generation of bio-sustainable polymer not dependent on oil. He is also known for the integration of chemistry (in the form of CML) with latest Internet technologies such as

RSS RSS ( RDF Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) is a web feed that allows users and applications to access updates to websites in a standardized, computer-readable format. Subscribing to RSS feeds can allow a user to keep track of many di ...

and

Podcasting A podcast is a program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. For example, an episodic series of digital audio or video files that a user can download to a personal device to listen to at a time of their choosing ...

, for the introduction of the Chemical

MIME Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) is an Internet standard that extends the format of email messages to support text in character sets other than ASCII, as well as attachments of audio, video, images, and application programs. Message ...

types in 1994 and for, the first electronic-only conferences in

organic chemistry Organic chemistry is a subdiscipline within chemistry involving the scientific study of the structure, properties, and reactions of organic compounds and organic materials, i.e., matter in its various forms that contain carbon atoms.Clayden, ...

, which ran from 1995-1998.

Awards and honours

Rzepa was awarded the Herman Skolnik Award in 2012 by the

American Chemical Society The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a scientific society based in the United States that supports scientific inquiry in the field of chemistry. Founded in 1876 at New York University, the ACS currently has more than 155,000 members at all ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rzepa, Henry Stephen Academics of Imperial College London Living people British chemists Theoretical chemists 1950 births Computational chemists Alumni of Imperial College London