Kenichi Fukui, Frontier Molecular Orbital Theory, and the Woodward‐Hoffmann Rules. Part III. Fukui's Science and Technology, 1918–1965^†**

Abstract

† Dedicated to the many members Kenichi Fukui's kozas whose research is only in small measure reported herein, and especially to Hiroshi Fujimoto and Kazuyoshi Tanaka whose tutorials made my writing these papers on Fukui possible.

My first and my latest publication

“…And I admit: one paper (Paper 4-Part III) is intentionally over-the-top technical. [13] But I clearly announce that fact.…”

“…The early 1960s were particularly ripe for great creativity in organic chemistry! What is also fascinating about this episode in the history of chemistry is why these others who came before Woodward and Hoffmann did not see their discoveries immediately seized upon by others as were Woodward and Hoffmann's ideas [10][11][12][13] ; and why several others were so very close but did not get there. And then there are others who came after Woodward and Hoffmann and felt that their contributions were undervalued and credit misassigned.…”

Introduction to “The Woodward‐Hoffmann Rules. From May 5, 1964, to November 30, 1964”**

“…* Publication 4 (in three parts [28][29][30] ) appeared in the April 2022 issue of TCR and tells the story of the Japanese theoretical chemist Kenichi Fukui. Fukui began his academic career as a student in the Department of Industrial Chemistry in the Graduate School of Engineering at Kyoto [21] The lowest HMO has zero nodes, the next lowest has one node, and so forth (beginning at the lower left and continuing in counterclockwise fashion).…”

“…The reasons for this oversight by the chemical community are set forth in Publication 4 -Parts II and III. [29,30] Very little has been written about Fukui in English, and consequently Part I of Publication 4 is a biographical essay on Fukui, the person. [28] * Any scientist could have written the first WÀ H publication if they knew of the no-mechanism problem and especially knew of any of the mysterious reactions (eq.…”

Why Hoffmann? His Chemistry**

“…Theoretical chemists of that era loved their algebra. One sees precious few MOs drawn out in the pre-1965 Fukui papers, though Fukui was drawing a conclusion about one AO and not another in his LCAO calculations (see Papers 4-Part II [71] and 4-Part III [72] in this series). Harry Gray's book Electrons and Chemical Bonding [73] that was published in 1964 was full of orbitals and included simple perturbation theory.…”