And Crystals: An Introduction

Reprinted from The Nature of the Chemical Bond and the Structure of Molecules and Crystals An Introduction to Modem Structural Chemistry, 1st edn., by Linus Pauling, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, Chapter 12, pp. 403-411 (1939). 

The result was published in 1939 as The Nature of the Chemical Bond and the Structure of Molecules and Crystals An Introduction to Modern Structural Chemistry. It would become the most important Baker lecture book ever printed, and one of the most-cited scientific texts in history. In a very basic way, this book changed the course of chemistry. For the first time, the discipline was explained not as a collection of facts tied together by practical application in the laboratory but as a field unified by an underlying physical theory Pauling s quantum-mechanical ideas about the chemical bond. By showing how the new physics explained the chemical bond, how those bonds explained the structure of molecules, and how molecules structure explained their behavior, Pauling showed for the first time, as the Nobel Prize-winner Max Perutz said, that chemistry could be understood rather than memorized. ... 

Pauling L (1940) The nature of the chemical hmid and the structure of molecules and crystals an introduction to modem structural chemistry. Cornell University Press, Ithaca Pauling L (1980) Acta Crystalllogr B 36 1898-1901 Pauling L, Wheland GW (1933) J Chem Phys 1 362-374 Platt JR (1953) J Chem Phys 21 1597-1600... 

Pauling L (1960) The nature of the chemical bond and the structme of molecules and crystals an introduction to modtan structural chemistry. Cornell University Press, Ithaca... 

---