S. Francis Boys

Who was S. Francis Boys?

Samuel Francis Boys FRS was a British theoretical chemist.

Boys was born in Pudsey, Yorkshire, England. He was educated at the Grammar School in Pudsey and then at Imperial College, London. He graduated in Chemistry in 1932. He did his PhD at Trinity College at Cambridge University, supervised first by Professor Martin Lowry, and then, after Lowry's death in 1936, by Sir John Lennard-Jones.

In 1938, Boys 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 the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich, with Lennard-Jones as his supervisor. After the war, Boys 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 was only elected to a Cambridge College Fellowship at University College, now Wolfson College, shortly before his death.

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