- Ronald Gillespie
Ronald J. Gillespie, C.M., (
August 21 ,1924 ), achemistry professor atMcMaster University , specializes in the field ofMolecular Geometry in chemistry. Therefore, most of his research is theoretical. It was announced on the Governor General's website onJune 29 ,2007 that he is to be awarded the Order of Canada. [ [http://www.gg.ca/media/doc.asp?lang=e&DocID=5131 Governor General's website] ]He was educated at the
University of London obtaining a B. Sc. in 1945, a Ph. D. in 1949 and a D. Sc. in 1957. He was Assistant Lecturer and then Lecturer in the Department of Chemistry atUniversity College London inEngland from 1950 to 1958. He moved toMcMaster University ,Hamilton, Ontario ,Canada in 1958 and is now emeritus professor there. He was elected to the Fellowship of theRoyal Society of Canada in 1965.Gillespie has done extensive work on expanding the idea of the Valence Shell Electron Pair Repulsion (VSEPR) model of Molecular Geometry, which he developed with Ronald Nyholm, and setting the rules for assigning numbers and such. He has written several books on this VSEPR topic in
chemistry . Gillespie has also done extensive work on interpreting thecovalent radius of fluorine . Thecovalent radius of most atoms is found by taking half the length of a single bond between two similar atoms in a neutral molecule. Calculating the covalent radius forfluorine is more difficult because of its highelectronegativity compared to its smallatomic radius size. Ronald Gillespie’s work on the bond length of fluorine focuses on theoretically determining the covalent radius of fluorine by examining its covalent radius when it is attached to several different atoms.Publications
* "Chemical Bonding and Molecular Geometry: From Lewis to Electron Densities (Topics in Inorganic Chemistry)" by Ronald J. Gillespie and Paul L. A. Popelier
* "Atoms, Molecules and Reactions: An Introduction to Chemistry" by Ronald J. Gillespie
* "Chemistry" by Ronald J. Gillespie, David Humphreys, Colin Baird, and E. A. RobinsonReferences
* [http://www.chemistry.mcmaster.ca/faculty/gillespie/vitae.html His CV at McMaster University]
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