Atoms and Atomic Orbitals

Prefatory note: This chapter and the others in Part II have been written in as non-mathematical a style as the author could manage. The theoretical validity of the various statements made without formal proof can be checked in any of the many available texts on Quantum Chemistry [1, 2, 3]. The initiate, who may be tempted to skip this and the following chapter, is urged to skim through them anyway. To paraphrase Shakespeare’s Ulysses [8], “the author’s drift” may be nothing to “strain at” but his “position” may not be altogether “familiar”.