Axel Becke Wins the 2009 John C. Polanyi Award 

Professor Axel Becke, FRS, Killam Chair in Computational Science, won the 2009 John C. Polanyi Award of the CSC, one of the most prestigious awards given in Canada for excellence in research. His research on density functional theory has inspired researchers throughout the world and has resulted in Axel becoming the most-cited author in the chemical literature.

The Polanyi Award is a mark of distinction and recognition to a scientist for excellence in research in physical, theoretical or computational chemistry carried out in Canada.

The citation for the award reads as follows:

Since the early 1990's, the density functional theory (DFT) of the electronic structure of atoms, molecules and solids has enjoyed explosive growth in the chemical and physical sciences. Dr. Becke's work, beginning in the 1980's and continuing to the present, is largely responsible for this surge in DFT applications. He has developed new classesof density functional theories that are able to predict the energies of chemical reactions with high accuracy, at a fraction of the cost of older non-DFT methods. His landmark papers on the generalized gradient approximation (1988) and the incorporation of exact exchange (1993) are responsible for the development of very accurate methods at modest computational cost. These two single-authoe manuscripts have been cited about 22,000 and 14,000 times, respectively, and are the most-cited and third-most cited papers in the chemical literature. His contributions go beyond two seminal papers. His focus has been on DFT, but it is now realized that he has also solved the numerical Hartree-Fock problem that had eluded the best theoretical chemists and physicists for decades. More recently, he has turned his attention to the most challenging remaining problems in DFT. His novel and insightful treatment of weak interactions is already attracting attention in much the same way that his generalized gradient approximation research did twenty years ago. In summary, Dr. Becke is the world's foremost developer of new functionals for density functional theory and a theoretical chemist of the highest rank.

Axel began his connection to the Department of Chemistry as an NSERC Killam PDF in 1981 collaborating with Professor Russell Boyd and then joined Queen’s University as a faculty member in 1984.  On July 1, 2006 he returned to Dalhousie as the Killam Chair in Computational Science.