Russell M. Pitzer

At Harvard, Pitzer worked with William N. Lipscomb, Jr. in cooperation with the research group of John C. Slater at M.I.T.

The ethane barrier (see diagram at right) was first calculated accurately by Pitzer and Lipscomb[1] using Hartree Fock Self-Consistent Field (SCF) theory.

[2][3] Also at Harvard, Pitzer also helped formulate the perturbed Hartree–Fock equations in a form for calculating the effects of external electric and magnetic fields on molecules.

and a faculty member at Caltech before joining the Chemistry Department at Ohio State University in 1968.

In 1979, with John Yates, he published the first Jahn-Teller-Effect study (on cobalt trifluoride, CoF3) to use a computed energy surface.