Professor John R. Sabin from the Quantum Theory Project at the
University of Florida has decided to step down as the series editor of
Advances in Quantum Chemistry after many years of service to this book series
and the quantum chemistry community. Jack Sabin to his friends—and he
has very many—has been part of the series for longer than most of us can
remember. He became part of the crew involved with the series soon after
he joined the faculty at the University of Florida in 1971. In the early days of
the Sanibel Symposia, Jack was handling the manuscripts from symposium
participants that went into the Advances in Quantum Chemistry Symposium
issues. Later he became more and more involved in business of the
regular series as well. During these many years, a countless number of
manuscripts have passed through his hands, and he has been instrumental
in disseminating the results of quantum chemistry research to several generations
of scientists. So, it is not just an editor stepping down from the front
page of the series, it is a part of the series’s DNA that we now must get on
without. This volume will only be a small token of our appreciation for his
service to all of us, but it will give us an opportunity to pay tribute to him for
being both a scientist and a friend at the same time.
Erkki J. Brändas
Jack Sabin has been and still is an enthusiastic and devoted supporter of
Scandinavia, its language(s), traditions, and way of life. He arrived as a newly
graduated PhD and holder of an NIH postdoctoral fellowship for 1966–67,
becoming a young member of the growing Uppsala Quantum Chemistry
Group. As a maturing graduate student in 1966, I met Jack, arriving in
his new Swedish Volvo, with an already unquenchable thirst for science
and learning Scandinavian living and culture. He acclimated quickly and
was a perfect fit for the erudite versatility and international experience
weathered at the department. This was the birth and initiation of a distinguished
academic career as physicist, teacher, supervisor, science editor,
and university administrator, but he also stands for significantly much more!
Sailing, philately, genealogy, to mention a few, display his adroit interests in
depth, for instance, reflected in his compilation/edition Adventures in
Civilization, a fascinating and touching family history tracing his ancestry
back to more than 400 years ago. Unfortunately for Sweden, he was hijacked
to Denmark to enjoy the enchanted realm of Nordic summers and in particular
the Danish gem€ut. During the more than 50 years of friendship and
editorial camaraderie, at both Wiley and Elsevier, complex interactive social
and scientific editing has been a joy, multiply rewarding and diversifying—a
seminal occupation in consensus and compromise. For that, I am genuinely
grateful.
Jens Oddershede
Jack Sabin is a prominent scientist. I knew so already when I first got in
touch with him in the early 1970s where he was visiting Aarhus University
in Denmark. After 1978, when I moved to the University of Southern
Denmark in Odense, Jack and I have been engaged in close scientific
collaboration, with him visiting Odense at least once every year, a tradition
we are still upholding. Over the years, we have published 90 joint papers,
the last being published in 2021, and most of them with several other
coauthors. A scientific collaboration can only last so many years if we both
enjoy it and both contribute. Jack was the driving force in the search for new
and interesting applications of electronic structure methods. He saw things
I had not noticed, he knew the literature and the new trends very well, and
he had a clear view of the potential and the limitations in any application.
Even though he has a PhD in experimental physical chemistry, he is an
eminent physicist, much better than me, who has had a formal education
in physics! Over the years, we moved more and more into physics applications,
primarily into heavy ion stopping, a trend that was surely initiated and
driven by him and a field in which he became a true expert.
Jack is a team player. Wherever he is, he creates a positive spirit. He is the
“favorite visitor” at my department in Odense among the faculty, staff,
students, and coworkers, and he is a master in collecting the right team
behind a new project. He is the kind of person one always wishes to have
visiting your research group. When I was spending more and more time first
as dean and later as university president, he was the one who kept me alive
scientifically. Without him, my scientific career would have ended there.
Even though Jack and I have had many papers together, his total
scientific output exceeds 250, so he is also engaged in many other sides of
quantum theory other than the ones we have in common. John R. Sabin
has an extensive network all over the world, and the many contributions
and laudations in this volume bear witness to a highly esteemed scientific
fellow and friend.
Thank you, Jack, for your many contributions to quantum chemistry and
for your services to this series for so many years, and thank you for being who
you are. I am proud you are my friend.
JENS ODDERSHEDE and ERKKI J. BRÄNDAS
Cambridge, MA 02139, USA: Academic Press , 2022. , p. 387