Irwin Oppenheim passes away

Irwin Oppenheim passes away

Theoretical chemist praised by students and colleagues

DEPARTMENT OF CHEMISTRY

July 9, 2014

MIT professor emeritus of chemistry Irwin Oppenheim, 84, of Cambridge, passed away on June 3 from complications following cardiac surgery.

Oppenheim carried out his undergraduate studies in chemistry and physics at Harvard University, graduating summa cum laude in 1949. He attended graduate school at the California Institute of Technology under John Gamble Kirkwood; when Kirkwood left for Yale University, Oppenheim followed him, completing his PhD in physical chemistry in 1956. His thesis research involved some of the first usage of the Wigner functions and expansion in powers of Plancks constant to develop quantum corrections to classical distribution functions. These distribution functions were then exploited to deduce thermodynamic properties and transport coefficients.

Oppenheim joined MITs Department of Chemistry in 1961 as an associate professor notably, its first theoretical chemist. He was promoted to full professor in 1965.

Oppenheims research at MIT concentrated on a molecular description of relaxation phenomena in gases and liquids; he, his students, and collaborators made many important contributions to the field.

One important contribution is his explanation of the origin of the long time tails unexpectedly observed in early molecular dynamics simulations of the correlation function of the viscosity of gases, says Institute Professor emeritus John M. Deutch, who was Oppenheims second PhD student. He improved our understanding of the microscopic basis of hydrodynamics, Brownian motion, light scattering, [and] magnetic resonance, and this work influenced thinking about these topics throughout the world. He was an expert on chemical thermodynamics and wrote two books on this subject.

With his passing, an important index [of] human civilization global aggregate knowledge of chemical thermodynamics has declined 65 percent, Deutch adds. Given all of Irwins contributions, I have thought for some time that his work has not received the recognition it should from the scientific community.

Read the original post:
Irwin Oppenheim passes away