John Lennard-Jones

Sir John Edward Lennard-Jones was a British mathematician who became the first Professor of Theoretical Physics in the United Kingdom, at the University of Bristol in 1927, and later the first holder of the chair of theoretical chemistry at the University of Cambridge. Born in Leigh, Lancashire in 1894, he studied mathematics at Manchester and took a second doctorate at Cambridge under Ralph Fowler. He was a pioneer of modern theoretical and computational chemistry, known for his work on molecular structure, valency and intermolecular forces. The Lennard-Jones potential, which describes the energy between two atoms of a noble gas as a balance of attraction and repulsion, is named after him.