Abstract
THE energy barrier separating the initial and final states of a reaction has ceased to be a fictitious concept since the main principles of chemical inertia were discovered by F. London (1927). For some simple cases, we can now calculate the energy changes occurring during the process of reaction, and follow the paths along which the atoms move. We can, in particular, obtain in many cases a clear picture of the configuration which corresponds to the top of the energy barrier. This configuration is called the transition state T of the reaction.
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Polanyi, M. The Transition State in Chemical Kinetics. Nature 139, 575–576 (1937). https://doi.org/10.1038/139575a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/139575a0