Russell J BoydBiography of Russell Boyd

Russell Boyd is Alexander McLeod Professor Emeritus at Dalhousie University. He graduated in 1967 from the University of British Columbia with First-Class Honours in Chemistry and the Lefevre Gold Medal. Upon receiving hs PhD in 1971 in Theoretical Chemistry from McGill University, he went to Oxford University as an NRC Postdoctoral Fellow with Charles Coulson at the Mathematical Institute. He returned to Canada as a Killam Postdoctoral Fellow in Chemistry at UBC from 1973 to 1975. He joined Dalhousie University in 1975 and rose through the ranks to become a Professor in 1985. He was named a Killam Professor in 1997 and in 2001 he became the seventh Alexander McLeod Professor of Chemistry. The McLeod Chair, one of the oldest named professorships in Canada, was created in 1884. His administrative roles at Dalhousie University include serving as Chair of the Department of Chemistry from 1992 to 2005 and Associate Vice-President of Research from 2006 to 2011.

He has published about 300 peer-reviewed papers and review chapters in computational and theoretical chemistry and co-edited in 2007 The Quantum Theory of Atoms in Molecules. He has supervised the research of 25 PhD students, more than 25 postdoctoral fellows and senior visitors, and a comparable number of undergraduate students. He is Editor-in-Chief of a forthcoming major reference work entitled Comprehensive Computational Chemistry.

Professor Boyd is a member of the Scientific Board of the World Association of Theoretical and Computational Chemists (WATOC) and Chair of the 12th Triennial Congress WATOC. His many professional activities include serving as Editor for Theoretical Chemistry of the Canadian Journal of Chemistry from 1988 to 1998, President of the Canadian Society for Chemistry for 2007-2008, and Chair of The Chemical Institute of Canada for 2012-2013. He was elected to the Bureau of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) in 2013, and he was elected to the Executive Committee of IUPAC in 2019.

He has served on five committees (two as Chair) of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and numerous national selection committees including the Steacie Prize for Natural Sciences, the Adjudication Committee of the Canada-Fulbright Program, the Canadian Science and Engineering Hall of Fame, the Killam Selection Committee of the Canada Council, and the NSF (USA) Science and Technology Centers Selection Panel.

He received the 2009 Montreal Medal of the Chemical Institute of Canada in recognition of his distinguished contributions to the profession of chemistry in Canada. Read More Read Less