Abstract
THE Pedler Lecture of the Chemical Society, given by the president, Dr. W. H. Mills, dealt with information supplied by wave mechanics about the valency configurations of atoms. The lecture as printed in the Journal of the Chemical Society (457 ; 1942) gives a clear and well-illustrated account of the subject in which the mathematical apparatus is reduced to a minimum. It is shown how the combination of wave functions for the electrons in an atom leads to very surprising detail of bond directions which gives a reason for many facts established experimentally by chemists working with the guidance of the classical views on stereochemistry, such as the tetrahedral arrangement of bonds associated with the carbon atom. These views are now shown to be in agreement with the theoretical deductions, and the latter are seen to be of considerable interest to chemists. Recent determinations of bond distances and angles by physical methods have provided quantitative data from which models of molecular configurations may be constructed.
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The Basis of Stereochemistry. Nature 150, 572 (1942). https://doi.org/10.1038/150572c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/150572c0