Chemistry Prize to Fukui and Hoffmann

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded the 1981 Nobel prize in chemistry jointly to Kenichi Fukui of Kyoto Imperial University and Roald Hoffmann of Cornell. The two theoretical chemists are cited by the Academy “for their theories, developed independently, concerning the course of chemical reactions.” Both men have used similar perturbation‐theoretic approaches to the quantum theory of molecular bonding to develop useful techniques for the understanding and prediction of reaction rates and geometrical configurations in molecular reactions. Their ideas stress the conservation of spatial symmetries of electron wavefunctions as bonds are altered in the process of molecular rearrangement.