Oktay Sinanoglu

Oktay Sinanoğlu (February 25, 1935-April 19, 2015) was a physical chemist who achieved lasting recognition in the early sixties by developing powerful insights on the electron correlation problem in quantum chemistry.

Sinanoğlu got his bachelor’s degree from the University of California at Berkeley. After a brief stint at MIT where he received a master degree, he returned to Berkeley where he earned his PhD in physical chemistry in 1960 under the guidance of Kenneth Pitzer. That same year, Sinanoğlu joined the Yale University faculty and was appointed full professor of chemistry on July 1, 1963 at the early age of 28. He thus became the youngest full professor in Yale’s 20th-century history. It is believed that he was the third-youngest full professor in the history of Yale University.

In the early sixties, Sinanoğlu developed what turned out to be his best known work, the “Many Electron Theory of Atoms and Molecules”, providing a powerful approach to the electron correlation problem. Time was perhaps not ripe for some of his subsequent theoretical forays, such as his “network theory of chemical reactions” from the late seventies, or his “microthermodynamic surface tension” from the early eighties. The concepts introduced thereby proved to be quite ahead of their time and were probably not as fully appreciated as his early work in quantum chemistry. Theoretical chemists Vincent McKoy and Ariel Fernandez are counted among his former doctoral students.

Oktay Sinanoğlu was extremely gifted and endowed with an almost peerless intuition that led him directly to the core of the matter at stake. His persuasive style, intensity and powerful delivery were simply astonishing. His early appointment at Yale as full professor was partly spearheaded by Lars Onsager, one of the foremost physical chemists of the day. This event attests to the lasting impression that Oktay Sinanoğlu left on his peers and places him in the distinguished tradition of theoretical physical chemists at Yale, dating back to Josiah Willard Gibbs.

On the personal side, Oktay Sinanoğlu was a loyal friend and a sensitive man with unerring psychological intuition. He would not make an effort to conceal his likes or dislikes. After his retirement from Yale in 1997, he became progressively more engaged in geopolitical matters involving his motherland, Turkey, where he was finally laid to rest.

Ariel Fernandez, Ph. D.
Former Hasselmann Professor of Bioengineering at Rice University