Oktay Sinanoğlu

Oktay Sinanoğlu (February 25, 1935 – April 19, 2015) was a Turkish physical chemist and molecular biophysicist who made contributions to the theory of electron correlation in molecules, the statistical mechanics of clathrate hydrates, quantum chemistry, and the theory of solvation.

Early life and education Sinanoğlu was born in Bari, Italy on February 25, 1935. His parents were Rüveyde (Karacabey) Sinanoğlu and Nüzhet Haşim. His father Rüveyde was a writer, and a consular official in the Bari consulate of Turkey. This work anticipated the widely used coupled cluster method for describing electrons in molecules with greater accuracy than is possible via the Hartree-Fock method. He also published notable papers on the statistical mechanics of clathrate hydrates, solvation, and surface tension. His final projects were focused on the development of his valency interaction formula (VIF) theory, a method for predicting energy level patterns for compounds from the manipulation of graphs. He continued to develop the VIF method, which he sometimes referred to as "Sinanoğlu Made Simple," and other problems related to graph theory and quantum mechanics for the rest of his career. After 37 years on the Yale faculty, Sinanoğlu retired in 1997.

During his time at Yale, Sinanoğlu served as a consultant to Turkish universities, the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK), and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS).

Personal life and death On December 21, 1963, Oktay Sinanoğlu married Paula Armbruster,