Optical, Electric and Magnetic Properties of Molecules: A Review of the Work of A.D. Buckingham

This volume arose from a desire to celebrate the career and scientific accomplishments of David Buckingham. As the date of his anticipated retirement from his Chair at Cambridge approached, a number of colleagues and former students including the editors, started to plan a fitting celebratory occasion in David’s honour. The result was a 3-day symposium in Cambridge on 10-13 July 1997, entitled Optical, Electric and Magnetic Properties of Molecules . In the process of preparing for that occasion, the editors evolved the additional idea of a more lasting tribute to David, hence this text. The adopted format for the book comprises reprints of a number of David Buckingham’s key scientific papers, each one or two of these preceded by a review of the corresponding area of his wide-ranging research interest. Each reviewer is recognized as an expert in that field of interest and has some close association with David, as a scientific colleague and/or a former research student. The book should serve as a reference source, both retrospective and prospective, for the field of chemical physics with which the name A.D. Buckingham is associated. Since David has published many papers, it was an extensive task to select material for a book of finite size. The editors opted to reprint a majority of early classic Buckingham papers, balanced by some of David’s more recent publications. Reprinted papers have been placed into a general scientific context that covered prior influences on, and later impacts by, the work nominated for review. Only two of David’s many review articles have been reprinted (Chapters 5 and 10).