1994 POLANYI-AWARD LECTURE - CONCEPT OF ACTIVE ELECTRONS IN CHEMISTRY

The notion of division between active and dormant electrons has been well received and widely used in the chemists' way of thinking. The core-valence separation in atoms is the best-known example. This paper describes a theoretical and computational method called the model potential method, which deals only with active electrons in molecular and solid state calculations. The method is capable of reaching computational accuracy of testing the validity of the separation of active and dormant electrons in individual cases.