The author summarizes the development and the applications of overlap determinant method in various fields of pericyclic reactivity. The greatest advantage of this new method lies in its remarkable simplicity and flexibility owing to which it opens an interesting possibility of the systematic investigation of important mechanistic problems of pericyclic reactivity which were so far beyond the scope of other existing techniques.

Protein engineering endeavors to design new peptides and proteins or to change the structural and/or functional characteristics of existing ones for specific purposes, opening the way for the development of new drugs. This work develops in a comprehensive way the theoretical formulation for the methods used in computer-assisted modeling and predictions, starting from the basic concepts and proceeding to the more sophisticated methods, such as Monte Carlo and molecular dynamics. An evaluation of the approximations inherent to the simulations will allow the reader to obtain a perspective of the possible deficiencies and difficulties and approach the task with realistic expectations. Examples from the authors laboratories, as well as from the literature provide useful information.

In recent years the fundamental concepts and applied methodologies of molecular similarity analysis have experienced a revolutionary development. Motivated by the increased degree of understanding of elementary molecular properties on the levels ranging from fundamental quantum chemistry to the complex interactions of biomolecules, and aided by the spectacular progress in computer technology and access to computer power, the area has opened up to many new ideas and new approaches. This book covers topics in quantum similarity approaches, electron density shape analysis methods, and it provides better theoretical understanding of molecular similarity. Additionally, quantitative shape analysis, especially activity relations (QShAR) and the prediction of the pharmacological or toxicological effects of molecules in the related context of quantum QSAR (QQSAR). This volume written by the experts in the various subfields of molecular similarity, provides a collection of the most recent ideas, advances, and methodologies. It is the hope of the Editors that by representing these topics within a single volume, the readers will find a balanced overview of the status of the field. We also hope that the book will serve as a tool for selecting and assessing the best approach for various new types of problems of molecular similarity that may arise and it will provide a set of easy references for further studies and applications.

Methods in Reaction Dynamics is a collection of lectures given at the 1999 Mariapfarr Workshop in Theoretical Chemistry. Arranged as a series of detailed reviews, it provides an overview of quantum mechanical techniques used to describe and simulate the dynamics and kinetics of elementary chemical reactions. The volume provides in-depth discussions of selected topics in Theoretical Chemistry, such as quantum methods in theoretical and computational reaction dynamics and kinetics; time-dependent, time-independent and mixed quantum-classical techniques. Some of the topics have not been reviewed before in detail.

The amazing growth of computational resources has made possible the modeling of complex chemical processes. To develop these models one needs to proceed from rigorous theoretical methods to approximate ones by exploiting the potential of innovative architectural features of modern concurrent processors. This book reviews some of the most advanced theoretical approaches in the field of molecular reaction dynamics in order to cope as rigorously as possible with the complexity of real systems.

Relativistic effects are of major importance for understanding the properties of heavier atoms and molecules. Volumes I-III of Relativistic Theory of Atoms and Molecules constitute the only available bibliography on related calculations. In Volume III, 3792 new references covering 1993-1999 are added to the database. The material is characterized by an analysis of the respective papers. The volume gives the user a comprehensive bibliography on relativistic atomic and molecular calculations, including studies on the Dirac equation and related solid-state work.

On the occasion of the fourth International Conference on Industrial and Applied Mathematics!, we decided to organize a sequence of 4 minisymposia devoted to the mathematical aspects and the numerical aspects of Quantum Chemistry. Our goal was to bring together scientists from different communities, namely mathematicians, experts at numerical analysis and computer science, chemists, just to see whether this heterogeneous set of lecturers can produce a rather homogeneous presentation of the domain to an uninitiated audience. To the best of our knowledgde, nothing of this kind had never been tempted so far. It seemed to us that it was the good time for doing it, both . because the interest of applied mathematicians into the world of computational chemistry has exponentially increased in the past few years, and because the community of chemists feels more and more concerned with the numerical issues. Indeed, in the early years of Quantum Chemistry, the pioneers (Coulson, Mac Weeny, just to quote two of them) used to solve fundamental equations modelling toy systems which could be simply numerically handled in view of their very limited size. The true difficulty arose with the need to model larger systems while possibly taking into account their interaction with their environment. Hand calculations were no longer possible, and computing science came into the picture.

The authors introduce the concept of Molecular Quantum Similarity, developed in their laboratory, in a didactic form. The basis of the concept combines quantum theoretical calculations with molecular structure and properties even for large molecules. They give definitions and procedures to compute similarities molecules and provide graphical tools for visualization of sets of molecules as n-dimensional point charts.

Potential Energy Surfaces is a collection of lectures given at the 1996 Mariapfarr Workshop in Theoretical Chemistry, organized by Alexander F. Sax. The Mariapfarr Workshops' aim is to discuss in-depth topics in Theoretical Chemistry. The target group of these workshops is graduate students and postdocs.

The authors demonstrate that the essential information about order in, and energy levels of physical systems is encapsulated in the second order reduced density matrix. They have discovered an algorithm to obtain a reasonable accurate expression for the 2-matrix of an N-particle state to make nearly all properties of matter which are of interest to chemists and physicists accessible.