Linus Pauling and The Nature of the Chemical Bond: A Documentary History Narrative  
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First Steps
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Heitler and London’s hydrogen molecule paper was not, in Pauling’s view, followed up with much of value. The German pair were physicists, after all, not chemists, so they could not be expected to understand how their exchange-energy concept related to the huge cornucopia of chemical phenomena, most of which they knew nothing about. Even though they had beaten Pauling to the first successful quantum-mechanical attack on the chemical bond, there was still much he could do to expand and rework their original insight.

One of the first things he did was to prepare a long article for Chemical Reviews in which he introduced the Heitler-London chemical-bond work and added some new insights of his own into its application to the one-electron hydrogen molecule-ion. This was the first glimpse that most chemists had seen of the quantum mechanical approach to their field, and it marked Pauling’s entrance onto the American scientific stage in his new role of quantum-chemist.

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Audio Clip  Audio: Pauling's 1927 Paper. January 17, 1983. (0:27) Transcript and More Information

Video Clip  Video: Lecture 2, Part 3. 1957. (5:55) Transcript and More Information



See Also: Letter from Linus Pauling to William Seifriz. April 12, 1946. 

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Picture
Linus and Ava Helen Pauling in Munich, with Walter Heitler (left) and Fritz London (right), 1927.


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"The application of the quantum mechanics to the structure of the hydrogen molecule and hydrogen molecule-ion and to related problems." June 1928.

"I slept till very late in the morning, found I couldn’t do work at all, had a quick lunch, went to sleep again in the afternoon and slept until five o’clock. When I woke up...I had clearly...the picture before me of the two wave functions of two hydrogen molecules joined together with a plus and minus and with the exchange in it. So I was very excited, and I got up and thought it out. As soon as I was clear that the exchange did play a role, I called London up, and he came to me as quickly as possible. Meanwhile I had already started developing a sort of perturbation theory. We worked together then until rather late at night, and then by that time most of the paper was clear.... Well...at least it was not later than the following day that we had the formation of the hydrogen molecule in our hands, and we also knew that there was a second mode of interaction which meant repulsion between two hydrogen atoms, also new at the time –- new to chemists, too."

Walter Heitler
March 18, 1963
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