A Different Story of Benzene

Abstract The paper summarizes a collaborative research of the authors over more than a decade, as described by the speaker (S. Shaik) at the recent WATOC conference in Jerusalem during July 8–12, 1996. This is a story of the attempts of the authors to drive home the idea that the π-electronic component of benzene and other conjugated systems has a dual character. The π-component is, on the one hand, distortive along a localizing mode, and on the other hand, it is stabilized by resonance energy relative to a localized reference. The text of the paper is a modified transcript of the talk and as such, the paper conserves the active voice of the speaker S. Shaik and the personalized style of his talk.

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