Robert J. LeRoy

Dr. Robert J. LeRoy (b. September 30, 1943 in Ottawa) is one of Canada’s leading chemists and is currently a professor in the University of Waterloo.

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He is a graduate from the University of Toronto. During his stay there, he began working with theoretical and computational chemical physics, which is what he would deal with for the rest of his career. Dr. LeRoy is renowned for two major achievements in the field of chemistry: the development of the "near-dissociation theory", alongside R. B Bernstein, and the derivation of the LeRoy Radius. Dr LeRoy is also the author of many computer programs that aid in collecting information from experiments. Many of his works are used by schools and labs throughout the world and have contributed to the progress of science.

Dr. LeRoy is interested in studying the intermolecular forces and the behaviour of small molecules and molecular clusters. His research focuses on this, which he calls the “sex life” of simple molecules.

Dr. LeRoy states that attempting to develop and apply methods for determining the precise details of the forces of interaction between the atoms in molecules, or between molecules, is one of his greatest ambitions. Our knowledge on such forces to him is rather primitive because other than that we understand that all molecular processes and properties are governed by these forces of attraction, we know little thing else.

In his research, Dr LeRoy involves using quantum mechanical theory to understand and explain how properties of molecular systems are the results of forces of interaction by quantitatively determining those forces from measurements of various properties. Some of these methods aren’t unfamiliar to us. For instance, he experiments with the pattern of particular frequencies of light absorbed and emitted by molecules to tell him of information about the shape and structure of the molecule, the forces in the bonds, the dissociation energy, and the nature of the fragment formed on dissociation.