Gerhard Herzberg

Gerhard Heinrich Friedrich Otto Julius Herzberg was a German Canadian physicist and physical chemist who lived from 1904 to 1999. He won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1971 for his contributions to the knowledge of electronic structure and geometry of molecules, particularly free radicals. His main work concerned atomic and molecular spectroscopy, techniques he used to determine the structures of diatomic and polyatomic molecules, including free radicals that are difficult to investigate any other way, and for chemical analysis of astronomical objects. He served as Chancellor of Carleton University in Ottawa from 1973 to 1980.