R. B. Woodward,A Great Physical Organic Chemist

Robert Burns Woodward is considered one of the greatest synthetic organic chemists of our time, if not the greatest. This article presents evidence that Woodward was also one of the greatest physical organic chemists as well. Among Woodward and his collaborators' most important accomplishments in the field of physical organic chemistry are: the Woodward–Hoffmann rules; the derivation and use of structure–mechanism–reactivity relationships in his multifold structure determinations and total syntheses; the Woodward ultraviolet rules and the Octant Rule; and his early demonstration that synthetic organic chemistry can contribute to the synthesis of potential superconductors and thus, to material science. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Pressure-Induced Shifts of R, R'', and B Line-Groups and Ground-State Zero-Field-Splitting of Ruby

By means of improved ligand-field theory, the “pure electronic” presure-induced shifts (PS's) and the PS's due to electron-phonon interaction (EPI) of the R₁, R₂, B₁, B₂, B₃, and R'₃ lines and the ground-state zero-field-splitting of ruby have been uniformly calculated. The calculation results are in very good agreement with all the experimental data. At normal pressure, ruby is a crystal with very strong crystal field. Thus, the admixture of |t₂²(³T₁)e⁴T₂〉and |t³₂²E〉bases in the wavefunction of R₁ level of ruby is small at normal pressure, and it gradually decreases with increasing pressure, which causes the R₁-line PS of ruby to monotonously red shift with approximate linearity. The combined effect of the pure electronic PS of R₁ line and the PS of R₁ line due to EPI gives rise to the total PS of R₁ line. The analyses and comparisons among the features of R₁-line PS's of three laser crystals (ruby, GSGG:Cr³⁺ and GGG:Cr³⁺) have been made, and the origin of their difference has been revealed.     

Spontaneous magnetostriction in R2Fe14B (R=Y,Nd, Gd,Tb, Er)

Thermal expansion anomalies of R₂Fe₁₄B (R=Y, Nd, Gd, Tb, Er) stoichiometric compounds were studied by X-ray diffraction with high-energy synchrotron radiation using a Debye–Scherrer geometry in temperature range of ∼10–1000 K. A large invar effect with a corresponding large temperature dependence of lattice parameters ∼10–15 K above their Curie temperatures (T_c) are observed. The a-axes show a larger invar effect than the c-axes in all compounds. The spontaneous magnetostrain of the lattices and bonds are calculated. The iron sublattice is shown to dominate the volumetric spontaneous magnetostriction of the compounds and the contribution from the rare-earth sublattice is roughly proportional to the spin magnetic moment of the rare earths. The bond-length changes are consistent with the theoretical spin-density calculation. The average bonds magnetostrain around Fe sites is approximately proportional to their magnetic moments.