On the centennials of the discoveries of the hydrogen bond and the structure of the water molecule: the short life and work of Eustace Jean Cuy (1897–1925)

Abstract

The bent structure of the water molecule, and its hydrogen-bonding properties, arguably rank among the most impactful discoveries in the history of chemistry. Although the fact that the H—O—H angle must deviate from linearity was inferred early in the 20th century, notably from the existence of the electric dipole moment, it was not clear what that angle should be and why. One hundred years ago, a young PhD student at the University of California, Berkeley, Eustace J. Cuy, rationalized the V-shape structure of a water molecule using the Lewis theory of a chemical bond, i.e. a shared electron pair, and its tetrahedral stereochemistry. He was inspired, in part, by the proposal of a weak (hydrogen) bond in water by two colleagues at Berkeley, Wendell Latimer and Worth Rodebush, who published their classic paper a year earlier. Cuy went on to suggest that other molecules, notably H2S and NH3, have similar structures, and presciently predicted that this architecture has broader consequences for the structure of water as a liquid. This short, but brilliant paper has been completely forgotten, perhaps due to the tragic death of the author at the age of 28; the hydrogen-bond study is also rarely recognized. One of the most impactful publications on the structure of liquid water, a classic treatise published in 1933 by John Bernal and Ralph Fowler, does not mention either of the two pioneering papers. In this essay, the background for the two discoveries is described, including the brief history of Lewis's research on the nature of the chemical bond, and the history of the discovery of the hydrogen bond, which inspired Cuy to look at the structure of the water molecule. This is – to the best of the author's knowledge – the first biographical sketch of Eustace J. Cuy.

The major role of London dispersion interaction in the assembly of cellulose, chitin, and chitosan

“…Although more than one hundred years have passed since the first proposal for hydrogen bond (Huggins1971; Derewenda et al 2021), the estimation of its range of the strength is still under development (Emamian et al 2019). To computationally estimate one hydrogen bond interaction between small molecules such as water, one can simply separate the hydrogen bonding paired molecules and estimated the energy difference as hydrogen bond strength since the London dispersion interaction is small and thus can be neglected.…”

C-H Groups as Donors in Hydrogen Bonds: A Historical Overview and Occurrence in Proteins and Nucleic Acids

“…The concept of a hydrogen bond (H-bond)-and specifically the O-H. . .O bond between water molecules-was first proposed in 1920 by Wendell Latimer and Worth Rodebush, two young scientists working at the College of Chemistry directed at Berkeley by Gilbert N. Lewis [1,2]. It was, in fact, Lewis who coined the term 'hydrogen bond' three years later [3,4].…”

“…The Faraday Society meeting was attended by twenty-six overseas participants, although the list of names was not published. One of them was very likely Maurice L. Huggins, the coauthor of the concept of the classical hydrogen bond [1,2,4]. One month after the meeting-and so nearly a year before the talks and summary of discussion came out in the press-Huggins submitted a broad review of what he called 'hydrogen bridges', which included a section on C-H. .…”