Russell J. Boyd

Russell Jaye Boyd (born September 11, 1945) is a Canadian computational and theoretical chemist. He is Professor Emeritus at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Biography Early life and education Russell Jaye Boyd was born in Kelowna, British Columbia, on September 11, 1945. Upon receiving his PhD in 1971 in Theoretical Chemistry from McGill University, he went to Oxford University as an NRC Postdoctoral Fellow with Charles Coulson at the Mathematical Institute. In 2001 he became the seventh Alexander McLeod Professor of Chemistry. The McLeod Chair, one of the oldest named professorships in Canada, was created in 1884. He was awarded the status of Professor Emeritus in 2013. In 2007, Boyd co-edited The Quantum Theory of Atoms in Molecules: From Solid State to DNA and Drug Design. He has supervised the research of 25 PhD students, more than 25 postdoctoral fellows and senior visitors, and a comparable number of undergraduate students. and is Chair of the 12th Triennial Congress of WATOC. He is a Fellow of the Chemical Institute of Canada and received the prestigious 2009 Montreal Medal of the Chemical Institute of Canada in recognition of his distinguished contributions to the profession of chemistry in Canada. His many professional activities include serving as Editor for Theoretical Chemistry of the Canadian Journal of Chemistry from 1988 to 1998, President of the Canadian Society for Chemistry for 2007-2008, and Chair of The Chemical Institute of Canada for 2012-2013. He was elected to the Bureau of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry in 2013.

He has served on five committees (two as Chair) of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada and numerous national selection committees including the Steacie Prize for Natural Sciences, the Killam Selection Committee of the Canada Council, the Adjudication Committee of the Canada-Fulbright Program, the Canadian Science and Engineering Hall of Fame, and the NSF (USA) Science and Technology Centers Selection Panel.

In light of his extensive achievements and impact on the field of chemistry, there have been two occasions on which a special issue of the Canadian Journal of Chemistry has been published in his honour with contributions from many international research groups.

Publications Selected Publications: Relative Sizes of the High and Low Spin States of Atoms, R.J. Boyd, Nature 250, 566-567 (1974); A Quantum Mechanical Explanation for Hund's Multiplicity Rule, R.J. Boyd, Nature, 310, 480-481 (1984); Selenium Stories, R.J. Boyd, Nature Chemistry, 3, 570 (2011).