AAAS Names Car a Lifetime Fellow
Roberto Car, the Ralph W. *31 Dornte Professor in Chemistry and the Princeton Institute for the Science and Technology of Materials, has been named a Lifetime Fellow by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest general scientific society and publisher of the Science family of journals.
Car was cited for distinguished contributions to the field of computational physics, particularly for his development of techniques for the dynamic simulation of materials with quantum mechanical accuracy. He is one of 564 scientists, engineers, and innovators spanning 24 scientific disciplines selected in the new fellowship class.
Roberto Car, the Ralph W. *31 Dornte Professor in Chemistry.
“I consider it a great honor to have been elected fellow of the AAAS,” said Car. “It is a call to work even harder to promote scientific thinking through research and teaching.”
Car is a theoretical and condensed matter physicist and theoretical chemist who has consistently delivered novel tools that allow scientists to exploit the extraordinary gains in computing over the last few decades. He is perhaps best known for pioneering a method of calculating the movement of electrons and their nuclei, the Car-Parinello ab initio molecular dynamics method.
Car is also an associated professor with the Department of Physics, and director of Chemistry in Solution and at Interfaces, a Department of Energy-supported Computational Chemical Science Center.
“AAAS is proud to bestow the honor of AAAS Fellow to some of today’s brightest minds who are integral to forging our path into the future,” said Sudip Parikh, AAAS chief executive officer. “We celebrate these distinguished individuals for their invaluable contributions to the scientific enterprise.”
The AAAS is still exploring when fellows can safely gather to celebrate their induction.
Car has been part of Princeton’s faculty since 1999. He was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2016. More recently, he received the 2021 Benjamin Franklin Medal in chemistry with Parrinello; and the 2020 Gordon Bell Prize.