Kenichi FukuiDied 9 Jan 1998 at age 79 (born 4 Oct 1918).Japanese chemist whosharedthe 1981 Nobel Prize for Chemistry with Roald Hoffmann for investigation of the mechanisms of chemical reactions. In 1952, at Kyoto University, Fukui introduced his “frontier orbital theory of reactions.”He proposed that the course of a reaction is determined by geometry and relative energies of molecular orbitals of reactants. The theory explains electrophilic attack, for example, occurs at the carbon atom having the greatest density of frontier (highest energy) electrons. In the mid-1960s, Fukui and Hoffmann discovered—almost simultaneously and independently of each other—that symmetry properties of frontier orbitals could explain certain reaction courses that had previously been difficult to understand. |
