William Joseph Wiswesser (December 3, 1914 – December 17, 1989) was an American chemist best known as the creator of the Wiswesser line notation (WLN), which was an innovative way to represent chemical structures in a linear string of characters suitable for computer manipulation.
[2] In 1945, he published his paper describing a formula that correctly orders the subshells of atomic orbitals in the manner of the Aufbau principle, known as the Wiswesser rule.
[3] Following his time at Cooper Union, Wiswesser worked for Willson Products, where he was Director of Industrial Hygiene, followed by civilian employment by the U.S. Army at Fort Detrick and finally at the Agricultural Research Service of the USDA.
Wiswesser was also interested in the history of chemistry and near the end of his life he made a special study of Josef Loschmidt's work, alone at first[6] and then together with preeminent chemist Alfred Bader.
[10] At the end of his life he was working for the United States Department of Agriculture on weed science until his final illness, and he died on 17 December 1989, aged 75, in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, leaving a widow, Katherine, and a son, daughter and four grandchildren.