One of the (not a few) pleasures of working in a university is the occasional opportunity that arises to give a new lecture course to students. New is not quite the correct word, since the topic I have acquired is Conformational analysis. The original course at Imperial College was delivered by Derek Barton himself about 50 years ago (for articles written by him on the topic[1] or the original[2] and so I have had an opportunity to see how the topic has evolved since then, and perhaps apply some quantitative quantum mechanical interpretations unavailable to Barton himself.
References
- D.H.R. Barton, "The Principles of Conformational Analysis", Science, vol. 169, pp. 539-544, 1970. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.169.3945.539
- D.H.R. Barton, and R.C. Cookson, "The principles of conformational analysis", Quarterly Reviews, Chemical Society, vol. 10, pp. 44, 1956. https://doi.org/10.1039/qr9561000044