prof. Pavel Hobza, dr. h. c.

Prof. Pavel Hobza has ranked among the most important Czech scientists at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries and the world’s most influential scientists in the field of computational chemistry. He discovered a new type of hydrogen bonding that helps explain the structure of biomolecules. With his collaborators, he has developed new scoring functions based on quantum mechanics to predict the efficacy of new drugs. His work has contributed to the understanding of interactions in biological systems, which he has advanced from a theoretical level to practical observation – describing and recording the so-called sigma-holes, which create a positive charge in the halogen atom and make molecules bind together that theoretically should not. This is an important development not only for the fundamental understanding of how atoms in molecules bind together, but also for practical materials chemistry. Prof. Hobza's results are regularly published in the world’s top journals, with a recent discovery published in the Science journal. Prof. Pavel Hobza graduated from the Faculty of Nuclear and Physical Engineering of the Czech Technical University and now works as a research group leader at the Institute of Chemical Engineering.