The Lewis legacy: The chemical bond - A territory and heartland of chemistry

Is chemistry a science without a territory? I argue that "chemical bonding" has been a traditional chemical territory ever since the chemical community amalgamated in the seventeenth century, and even before. The modem charter of this territory is Gilbert Newton Lewis, who started the "electronic structure revolution in chemistry." As a tribute to Lewis, I describe here three of his key papers from the years 1913, 1916, and 1923, and analyze them. Lewis has defined the quantum unit, the "electron pair bond," for construction of a chemical universe, and in so doing he charted a vast chemical territory and affected most profoundly the mental map of chemistry for generations ahead. Nevertheless, not all is known about the chemical bond" the chemical territory is still teaming with new and exciting problems of in new materials, nanoparticles, quantum dots, metalloenzymes, bonding at surface-vapor interfaces, and so on and so forth. (C) 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.