John C. Slater - Summary

Summary

From the memoir by Philip Morse: "He contributed significantly to the start of the quantum revolution in physics; he was one of the very few American-trained physicists to do so. He was exceptional in that he persisted in exploring atomic, molecular and solid state physics, while many of his peers were coerced by war, or tempted by novelty, to divert to nuclear mysteries. Not least, his texts and his lectures contributed materially to the rise of the illustrious American generation of physicists of the 1940s and 1950s."

But that was not the end. The new generation that Slater launched from the SSMTG and the QTP took knowledge and skills into departments of Physics and Chemistry and Computer Science, into industrial and government laboratories and academe, into research and administration. They have continued and evolved his methodologies, applying them to an increasing variety of topics from atomic energy levels to drug design, and to a host of solids and their properties. Slater imparted knowledge and advice, and he recognized new trends, provided financial support from his grants, and motivational support by sharing the enthusiasms of the protagonists.

In a slight paraphrase of a recent and forward looking comment of John Connolly, it can be said that the contributions of John C. Slater and his students in the SSMTG and the Quantum Theory Project laid the foundations of density functional theory which has become one of the premier approximations in quantum theory today.

Slater's papers were bequeathed to the American Philosophical Society by his widow, Rose Mooney Slater, in 1980 and 1982. In August 2003, Alfred Switendick donated a collection of Quarterly Reports of the MIT Solid State and Molecular Theory Group (SSMTG), dating from 1951 to 1965. These are available in several major research libraries.