供稿：李晖摄影：李晖编辑：秦月

　　应化学与化工学院的邀请，牛津大学化学系John McGrady教授于9月15日来我院精心学术访问，并在良乡校区工业生态楼327会议室为学校的师生做了题为"Metals in the middle: electrons on the localised /delocalised borderline"精彩的学术报告。

　　John McGrady教授的研究领域为计算无机化学（Computational Inorganic Chemistry）；他在金属-有机催化剂的结构、电子性质以及催化机理方面做出了有影响力的研究工作，发表了145 多篇论文，包括 J. Am. Chem. Soc. , Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., Chem. Comm., Chem. Sci., Acc. Chem. Res. 等。

　　报告结束后，我院师生与他展开了热烈的讨论。我院师生的科研热情与钻研精神深深地感染了他，访问结束时他说：“I very much enjoyed the questions after the seminar”，因此，他也表达了未来与我院合作的强烈愿望。

　　学术报告的内容摘要如下：

　　Metals in the middle: electrons on the localised/delocalised borderline.

　　Chemists, and particularly inorganic chemists, love to classify things: the periodic table is the perfect illustration of our desire to put atoms or molecules into neat boxes. This process, invaluable as it is, encourages a rather black-and-white view of chemistry, where everything fits neatly into a rigid framework. It is almost a century since Dirac argued that chemistry (and a large part of physics!) must, ultimately, be reducible to the solution of the Schrödinger equation, and his ‘ ab initio ’ approach represents an alternative vision of chemistry that admits no strict boundaries. Seen through the lens of quantum mechanics, all of chemistry is a continuum, and the most interesting phenomena arise where systems fall into the grey areas between traditional classes of behaviour. In this presentation I will discuss some of our recent work that probes the grey area between localisation and delocalisation of electrons in metal clusters. I will discuss the strengths and limitations of various computational methods, and show how electrons on the cusp of delocalization can influence the structural, magnetic and electron transport properties of molecules.