Boninos Place within Contemporary Research

The modern attempts of the quantum mechanical study of molecules have shown that it is not possible to proceed in this field without making use of the mathematical concept of group. This makes me wonder whether perhaps the organic chemist had not always applied, more or less consciously though in coarse form, some of the concepts of group theory. Perhaps in this part of pure mathematical logic we find the primary essence of the structural argument. [63] 

Dans le probleme de la construction d une molecule, selon la methode de Hund-Mulliken-Hiickel on ecrit, en approximation d ordre zero les auto-fonctions moleculaires comme des combinaisons lineaires des auto-fonctions electroniques des atomes constituants. De toutes les combinaisons possibles, celles qui con-viennent au probleme doivent etre conformes aux representations irreductibles du groupe de symetrie de la molecule. [71] 

Bonino s lecture met with success and gained a nod of approval from various colleagues, including Walter Hiickel, the brother of Erich. [72] Furthermore, Bonino renewed his friendship with Peter Debye and formed an acquaintance with Richard Kuhn, the president of the German Chemical Society. Nevertheless, in Paris he only touched upon the relationships between structure, valency, stereochemistry and the concept of symmetry. He took these arguments into deeper consideration the following year on a different occasion in Germany. 

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