In this Chapter, many of the basic concepts and tools of theoretical chemistry are discussed only at an introductory level and without providing much of the background needed to fully comprehend them. Most of these topics are covered again in considerably more detail in Chapters 6-8, which focus on the three primary sub-disciplines of the field. The purpose of the present Chapter is to give you an overview of the field that you will learn the details of in these later Chapters
Stanley E. Manahan is Professor of Chemistry at the University of MissouriColumbia, where he has been on the faculty since 1965 and is President of ChemChar Research, Inc., a firm developing non-incinerative thermochemical waste treatment
1858 ~ 1861, Kekulé, Couper, and Butlerov, laid the basis for one of the most fundamental theories in chemistry: the structural theory. Valence(化合价): C — tetravalent; O — divalent; H — monovalent