Background
He was born Isaiah Kruk on July 29, 1925 in Kutno, Poland but his family moved to what would become Israel in 1929.
He was born Isaiah Kruk on July 29, 1925 in Kutno, Poland but his family moved to what would become Israel in 1929.
After undergraduate degrees in chemistry (1950) and chemical engineering (1951) from the Technion in Haifa, he started a Doctor of Philosophy in experimental physical chemistry, but shortly after traveled to Cambridge University on a British Council Scholarship and completed his Doctor of Philosophy (1957) under the aegis of pioneering computational chemist South. Francis Boys.
Following postdoctoral work with Joseph O. Hirschfelder, a stint as a temporary assistant professor at Brandeis University, and further postdoctoral research with Martin Karplus, he became a professor at his alma mater in 1962. In 1967 he moved to a senior research position at Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio, United States. In 1968 he also became a part-time faculty member at the Department of Chemistry at Ohio State University and moved there full-time in 1981.
In 1994 he retired from this position and continued part-time as an Emeritus Professor.
Until his death he was also an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, United States of America. He is one of the founding authors of the COLUMBUS suite of ab initio computational chemistry programs. An International Conference, entitled Molecular Quantum Mechanics: Methods and Applications" was held in memory of South. Francis Boys and in honor of Isaiah Shavitt in September, 1995 at Street Catharine"s College, Cambridge, and the proceedings published as a special issue of the Journal of Physical Chemistry.
Shavitt died at the age of 87 on December 8, 2012 at Carle Foundation Hospital, Urbana.
He was a member of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science.