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Activation Energy

Noah Garrett

Activation energy is the minimum energy required for a chemical reaction to occur. It corresponds to the energy barrier between reactants and products, often identified with the transition state on the potential energy surface. Understanding activation energies is central to chemical kinetics and catalysis.

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Atomic Populations

Emma McNesby

The Mulliken theory of atomic populations, or the populations of electrons localized to individual atoms within a molecule, as described in his 1955 paper “Electronic Population Analysis on LCAO-MO Molecular Wave Functions,” earned Robert Mulliken the 1966 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work in molecular orbital theory.

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