Peter Gill

Peter Malcolm Wallace Gill (born 9 November 1962) is a New Zealand theoretical and computational chemist known for his contribution to density functional theory (DFT). He is an early and main contributor to the computational chemistry software Q-Chem and was the president of the company during 1998–2013. He is especially known for developing the PRISM algorithm for evaluating two-electron integrals and linear-scaling DFT, as well as self-consistent field method for excited state electronic structure.

Education and career Gill was born in Auckland and received his BSc in 1983 and MSc in 1984 from the University of Auckland. After graduation, he conducted postdoctoral work with John Pople at Carnegie Mellon University from 1988 to 1993. Following this stint, Gill accepted a lectureship at Massey University in 1993. He became a lecturer at the University of Cambridge in 1996. In 1999, Gill became the inaugural chair of theoretical chemistry at the University of Nottingham. He moved to Australia and became a professor at the Australian National University in 2004 and later moved to the University of Sydney in 2019 as the Schofield Chair in Theoretical Chemistry.

Honors and awards Gill is the president of the World Association of Theoretical and Computational Chemists (WATOC) and received the Dirac Medal in 1999 and the Schrödinger Medal in 2011 from WATOC. In 2015 Gill was inducted to the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science.