Is there a quantum definition of a molecule? |
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Authors: | RG Woolley |
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Institution: | (1) Department of Chemistry and Physics, Nottingham Trent University, Clifton Lane, Nottingham, NG11 8NS, UK |
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Abstract: | The paper surveys how chemistry has developed over the past two centuries starting from Lavoisier’s classification of the
chemical elements at the end of the eighteenth century; the subsequent development of the atomic–molecular model of matter
preoccupied chemists throughout the nineteenth century, while the results of the application of quantum theory to the molecular
model has been the story of this century. Whereas physical chemistry originated in the nineteenth century with the measurement
of the physical properties of groups of chemical compounds that chemists identified as families, the goal of chemical physics
is the explanation of the facts of chemistry in terms of the principles and theories of physics. Chemical physics as such
was only possible after the discovery of the quantum theory in the 1920’s. By then the first of the sub‐atomic particles had
been discovered and seemingly it is no longer possible to discuss chemical facts purely in terms of atoms and molecules –
one has to recognize the electron and the nucleus, the parts of atoms. The combination of classical molecular structure with
the quantum properties of the electron has given us a tremendously successful account of chemistry called ‘quantum chemistry’.
Yet from the perspective of the quantum theory the deepest part of chemistry, the existence of chemical isomers and the very
idea of molecular structure that rationalizes it, remains a central problem for chemical physics.
This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date. |
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