David R. Yarkony

DAVID R. YARKONY, the D. Mead Johnson Professor of Chemistry, is a world leader in the theoretical study of electronically nonadiabatic processes–those in which the Born-Oppenheimer approximation breaks down. The Born-Oppenheimer approximation is at the heart of the description of most chemical processes. Light harvesting, vision, and essential upper-atmospheric processes depend on electronically nonadiabatic steps. While this has been known for decades, in the last ten years our way of thinking about electronically nonadiabatic processes has begun to change dramatically–the consequence of rethinking the role of conical intersections in these processes. Dr. Yarkony’s research has helped lead this revolution, developing the tools for studying conical intersections that define the state of the art in this area. Joining Hopkins in 1977, Dr. Yarkony is a fellow of the American Physical Society and serves on the advisory boards of World Scientific Publishing, Theoretical Chemistry Accounts, and Theoretical and Computational Chemistry.