Michael A Robb

I have been a professor of chemistry at Imperial College since 2003. Before that I “rose through the ranks” to become professor head of department at King's College on the Strand. So you could say that my career has progressed around the Circle line since I first worked at Queen Elizabeth College on Campden Hill Road in the 70s – before the mergers of small London colleges in the 80s. I was elected Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2000. My interest has always been in theoretical chemistry, particularly in the chemistry of the excited state. Indeed, my first paper published in 1968 was on the excited states of formic acid amide.

My research has centred on the fundamental application of quantum mechanics to chemistry. I am the author of some 350 papers. My work has involved the development of the methodology of the subject, some of which is now available as public computer software via the Gaussian series of programs, and these methods have been applied to understanding the chemical reactivity of organic molecules. In the last 25 years my work has focused on contributions to photochemistry, where I have developed, together with many co-workers, a new versatile mechanistic paradigm in excited state chemistry involving conical intersections. Most recently, in collaboration with the Imperial College physics department, my work has extended into electron dynamics where the nuclear and electronic motion can become asynchronous.