Hello, ladies and gentlemen. I am Mario Pinto, President of NSERC, and I am here with Dr. Axel Becke, recipient of the 2014 Herzberg Gold Medal. Axel, it’s good to speak with you. And congratulations on winning NSERC’s top research prize.

Thank you very much.

Axel, you’ve made a revolutionary, fundamental contribution to chemistry and related areas. Could you comment and tell us a little bit about the nature of your discovery and its impact?

My research area is called density functional theory, and we all refer to it as just DFT. Density functional theory is concerned with the motions of electrons in all matter, and it is a branch of quantum theory that allows us to do computations of systems containing enormous numbers of atoms.

So quite literally, density functional theory is applicable to anything and everything because all matter in our terrestrial world depends on the motion of electrons, but until the 1980s, I would say, it did not have high enough accuracy to be useful. And I just wondered how can we make it better? think, to put it in a nutshell, 30 years later, we have improved the accuracy of DFT energy calculations by about a factor of 50.

What types of scientists are making use of your methods?

All scientists, and I’m not being facetious with that answer. My papers have been referenced a hundred thousand times to date and are increasing at the rate of 8,000 per year.

How do you think NSERC and support in general from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council has helped you and has been important to your career progress?

Absolutely 100 percent important. NSERC has been my constant research partner every year of my academic and graduate student career.

Where do you think the field of chemistry is heading?

Chemistry really is the central science of everything, and I think all challenges in the future that will benefit mankind will have chemistry as a central tool. So you can just list off the exciting developments in science that are coming up: biological chemistry, medicinal chemistry, self-assembling nanosystems, 3D printing, solar energy conversion. Nature does it better than anyone else. It’s photosynthesis; that’s chemistry.

Well, it’s been a pleasure to be a partner, Axel. And thank you very much for taking the time to speak with me today.

Thank you. Thank you very much.