Texas Molecular Quantum Mechanics

Kotani, M., Texas J. Sci. 8, 135 Proc. of the molecular quantum mechanics conference at Austin Texas, 1955. Electronic structure of some simple diatomic molecules/ Li2, 02 MO-SCF, MO-CI. Slater type orbitals. 

These facts appear to be unknown to most chemists even after thirty years. During this period I have presented freeon dynamics, on separate occasions, to Nobel-Laureate Robert Mulliken and to my research professor, Henry Eyring, after which I was asked by each whether "they had to learn that stuff ". I was able to assure them that their reputations would not suffer through the neglect of freeon dynamics. Even now after thirty years freeon dynamics does not appear in the standard quantum chemistry texts with the noteworthy exception of Roy McWeeny s Methods of Molecular Quantum Mechanics [2] Consequently the title of this article has been taken to be Freeon Dynamics. A Novel Theory of Atoms and Molecules. When, at the onset of my research on freeon dynamics, I told Norman Hackerman, a former office-mate and at that time president of the University of Texas, that I had an idea for a novel way to do quantum mechanics but that I did not know whether I would be able to acquire the necessary... 

Longuet-Higgins, H. C., Report of Molecular Quantum Mechanics Conference University of Texas, 1965, p. 43. 

The quantum chemical community stood in direct competition with experimental chemists for common funding resources, and in what relates to equipment, another group)— the crystallographers—relied on automated computations and was also fighting for computer access. Some quantum chemists decided to take immediate action, and at the 1955 Molecular Quantum Mechanics Conference, organized at the University of Texas, Austin, by F. A. Matsen, conference participants passed a... 

The questions that we are really asking concern the very nature of quantum chemistry, what relation it has to experiment, what function we expect it to fulfill, what kind of questions we would like it to answer. 1 believe we are divided in our own answers to these questions" (Coulson 1960, 172). Coulson believed that the problems culminating in the then-present deadlock could be traced to the recommendations made at the 1955 Molecular Quantum Mechanics Conference, organized at the University of Texas (see the previous section "Computers and Ab Initio Computations"). He was uncharacteristically persistent "It is in no small measure due to the success of these programs that quantum chemistry is in its present predicament" (Coulson 1960, 172). 

Molecular Quantum Mechanics Conference. 1956 Austin, TX University of Texas. 

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