Samuel Francis Boys

Samuel Francis Boys (20 December 1911-16 October 1972) was born in Pudsey, Yorkshire, United Kingdom. He was educated at the Grammar School in Pudsey and then at Imperial College, London. he graduated in Chemistry in 1932. He did his Ph. D. at Cambridge University, supervised first by Professor Martin Lowry, and then, after Lowry's death in 1936, by Sir John Lennard-Jones. In 1938, he was appointed an Assistant Lecturer in Mathematical Physics at Queen’s University, Belfast. He spent the whole of the Second World War working on explosives research with the Ministry of Supply at Woolwich Arsenal. Lennard-Jones was his supervisor. After the war, he accepted an ICI Fellowship at Imperial College, London. In 1949, he was appointed to a Lectureship in Theoretical chemistry at Cambridge University. He remained at Cambridge until his death.

He is best known for the introduction of Gaussian orbitals into ab initio quantum chemistry. Almost all basis sets used in Computational chemistry now use these orbitals. Frank Boys was also one of the first scientists to use digital computers for calculations on polyatomic molecules.

An International Conference, entitled "Molecular Quantum Mechanics: Methods and Applications" was held in memory of S. Francis Boys and in honour of Isaiah Shavitt in September, 1995 at St Catharine's College, Cambridge.

He was a member of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science