Wave Mechanics and Structural Chemistry

Abstract

THE modern applications of wave mechanics to molecular structure, and in particular the method of molecular orbitals developed by Mulliken and Lennard-Jones, have shown that it is not expedient to treat the individual links between atoms separately, and that the electrons in the molecule must be treated as a whole. The organic chemist, on the other hand, regards the molecule as held together by links from atom to atom, and the only distinction in kind which he recognises among links is into single, double and triple; and his method of representation is found to be capable of providing different formulæ for every experimentally distinct chemical substance; indeed it sometimes provides two formulæ for one substance, as with inseparable tautomers.