Group Theory Applied to Chemistry

Abstract

Chemists are more used to the operational definition of symmetry, which crystallo- graphers have been using long before the advent of quantum chemistry. Their ball- and-stick models of molecules naturally exhibit the symmetry properties of macro- scopic objects: they pass into congruent forms upon application of bodily rotations about proper and improper axes of symmetry. Needless to say, the practitioner of quantum chemistry and molecular modeling is not concerned with balls and sticks, but with subatomic particles, nuclei, and electrons. It is hard to see how bodily ro- tations, which leave all interparticle distances unaltered, could affect in any way the study of molecular phenomena that only depend on these internal distances. Hence, the purpose of the book will be to come to terms with the subtle metaphors that re- late our macroscopic intuitive ideas about symmetry to the molecular world. In the end the reader should have acquired the skills to make use of the mathematical tools of group theory for whatever chemical problems he/she will be confronted with in the course of his or her own research.