0000000000246900
AUTHOR
Andreas Karachalios
showing 7 related works from this author
The Postwar Years
2009
A few months after the capitulation of the German Reich on May 9, 1945, Huckel’s newly built house, that had withstood the ravages of war, was one of many in Marburg to be confiscated by the Americans. Huckel’s nervous condition deteriorated again under the heavy psychological pressure. His allusion to this in his autobiography was down to earth:
Linus Pauling’s Breakthrough to the Theory of Aromatic Compounds and Hückel’s Reaction
2009
In the mid-1930s Wheland and Pauling set out to find a quantum theoretical basis for Ingold’s general electronic theory of organic reactions. A brief outline of Ingold’s main concepts will provide the necessary background for an evaluation of their contribution and Huckel’s discussion of it.
Hückel’s Efforts to Disseminate His Theory and Its Reception
2009
Shortly after giving his talk in autumn 1934 at the International Conference on Physics in London, Huckel sought to introduce the results of his research on unsaturated and aromatic compounds elsewhere in Europe. On April 30, 1935 Huckel delivered a talk in French before the Societe de Physique in Paris. The title he chose was: “Aromatic and unsaturated compounds. Theoretical inquiry into their constitution and properties.”Describing his own efforts as clearly as he could, he also discussed his points of criticism against Pauling’s theoretical and mathematical approach. How his Parisian audience responded seems not to have come down to posterity. Huckel had been invited to give a series of …
Erich Hückel’s Research Agenda During the 1930s: Underpinning Organic Chemistry with Quantum Theory
2009
The foregoing three Sections 1.9.2, 1.9.3 and 1.9.4 have shown how Huckel’s interest in quantum mechanics and its application to problems in chemistry developed. Before turning our attention to a detailed history of Huckel’s theory of double bonding, it seems appropriate to insert a brief sketch of classical models of double bonds in stereochemistry and their limitations. The emphasis will be on controversial aspects of the classical theory important in the development of Huckel’s theory, which prompted him to develop his new ideas about double bonding.
The Controversy Between Erich Hückel and Linus Pauling over the Benzene Problem
2009
Shortly after Huckel’s quantum-theoretical work on the problem of aromatic compounds was published, the first paper on the same subject by the American Linus Pauling also appeared. It was the fifth installment of a total of seven that Pauling published between April 1931 and July 1933 under the general title The Nature of the Chemical Bond.This fifth part was the first coauthored with his pupil George Wheland, a National Research Fellow in Pasadena. In their quantum mechanical treatment of benzene, naphthaline and free organic radicals, they applied a “VB” approximation slightly different from Huckel’s “first method” yet sharing some resemblance with it. The two subsequent parts of Pauling’…
Hückel’s Professional Career in National Socialist Germany
2009
When the National Socialists took over the government in early 1933, Huckel was a lecturer of “chemical physics” at the Wurttemberg polytechnic (Technische Hochschule) in Stuttgart, at the peak of his productivity as a researcher and a teacher. On May 8, 1933 he submitted the fourth and final part of his opus magnum on the quantum theory of unsaturated and aromatic compounds to the editorial offices of Zeitschrift fur Physik.He was planning to offer a number of different courses that academic year, from April 1, 1933 to March 31, 1934.In addition he intended to continue the “Seminar on atomic physics,” that he had been offering annually since the academic year 1931/1932 together with the fu…
Erich Hückel’s Education and Scientific Awakening: The Path to Quantum Chemistry
2009
A lucky star seems to have hung over the year 1896 for quantum chemistry. Three of its founders in the 20th century were born in that year: Erich Huckel, Friedrich Hund and Robert S. Mullikan. Armand Arthur Erich Joseph Huckel was born on August 9, 1896 in Charlottenburg, on the outskirts of Berlin, as the second of three sons to Marie Huckel (1879–1947) nee Maier and the lecturer and medical doctor Armand Huckel (1860–1927). He spent his first 3 years in Charlottenburg with his brother Walter, who was a year older than him, in a spatious apartment on the first story of a building on Schluterstrasse before the arrival of their younger brother Rudi