Roald Hoffmann, born in Zloczow, Poland but educated in the US, is the Frank H. T. Rhodes Professor of Humane Letters at Cornell University. One of America's most distinguished chemists, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. A member of the US National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences as well as many foreign academies, Hoffmann has received 26 honorary doctorates together with numerous other honors such as the National Medal of Science. Hoffmann is the only person ever to receive the American Chemical Society's top awards in three sub- disciplines: organic chemistry, inorganic chemistry, and chemical education. For the past dozen years, Hoffmann has simultaneously pursued a literary career. He is the author of three books of poetry, The Metamict State, Gaps and Verges, and Memory Effects. His three non-fiction books deal with the overall theme of the creative and humanistic sparks of chemistry: An art/science/literature collaboration with artist Vivian Torrence, Chemistry Imagined; The Same and Not the Same; and Old Wine, New Flasks: Reflections on Science and Jewish Tradition, in collaboration with Shira Leibowitz Schmidt. Hoffmann is also is the presenter of a television course, The World of Chemistry, which has aired on many PBS Stations and abroad.

Introduction

Orbitals and Bands in One Dimension

Bloch Functions, k, Band Structures

Band Width

See How they Run

An Eclipsed Stack of Pt(II) Square Planar Complexes

The Fermi Level

More Dimensions, At Least Two

Setting Up a Surface Problem

Density of States

Where Are The Electrons?

The Detective Work of Tracing Molecule-Surface Interactions: Decomposition of the DOS

Where Are the Bonds?

A Solid State Sample Problem: ThCr_2Si_2 Structure

The Frontier Orbital Perspective

Orbital Interaction on a Surface

A Case Study: CO on Ni(100)

Barriers to Chemisorption

Chemisorption Is a Compromise

Frontiers Orbitals in Three-Dimensional Extended Structures

More Than One Electronic Unit in the Unit Cell, Folding Bands

Making Bonds in a Crystal

The Peierls Distortion

A Brief Excursion into the Third Dimension

Qualitative Reasoning About Orbital Interactions on Surfaces

The Fermi Level Matters

Another Methodology and Some Credits

What's New in the Solid

References

Index