Osawa concept

The /h-symmetric C60 molecule was first described by Osawa (1970), and the concept expanded the following year in the final chapter of Yoshida Osawa (1971). The book was read widely by Japanese chemists. There was, however, little response to my proposal of the potential stability of the football-shaped molecule. In the meantime, for reasons mentioned below, we stopped working on aromaticity and engaged in new fields of research until the classic paper of Kroto et al. (1985) appeared. In 1986, O Brien, then a graduate student with Smalley at Rice University, U.S.A., asked Yoshida for an English copy of this book and we produced a translation of pertinent portions (pp. 174-178) for him. This translation (slightly polished) is reproduced below. 

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