Robert Serson Mulliken (1896-1986)

Awarded the Prize “for his fundamental work concerning chemical bonds the electronic structure of molecules by the molecular orbital method.”

American physicist chemist. Mulliken was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts on June 7, 1896. He was educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at the University of Chicago, where he obtained his Ph.D. in 1921. He was appointed to the staff of the University of Chicago, where he served as Professor of Physics from 1931 until he retired in 1961. From 1961 he was Distinguished Service Professor of Physics Chemistry at Chicago Distinguished Research Professor of Chemical Physics at Florida State University. Mulliken died on October 30, 1986 at Arlington, Virginia.