Advances in Quantum Chemistry

Preface

Alessandro Lami; Vincenzo Barone

Giuseppe Del Re was one of the early pioneers of quantum chemistry in Italy. We, the guest editors of this volume, were among his many students and still retain a vivid and happy memory of his lectures on the subject: he took the greatest care in clarifying the meaning of all the key concepts and always insisted that the ultimate goal of the beautiful theory he was unraveling before our eyes was, quite simply, to provide a useful tool for interpreting complex chemical phenomena. He made it clear to us that even if the Schrodinger equation provides, in principle, the means of calculating all molecular properties, it can never provide an “explanation” of anything. It has to be considered simply as a starting ...