About Erich Hückel
Erich Armand Arthur Joseph Hückel (August 9, 1896 – February 16, 1980) was a German physicist and physical chemist. He is mainly known for the Debye–Hückel theory of electrolytic solutions and the Hückel method of approximate molecular orbital (MO) calculations on π electron systems. Hückel was born in the Charlottenburg suburb of Berlin. He studied physics and mathematics from 1914 to 1921 at the University of Göttingen. On receiving his doctorate, he became an assistant at Göttingen, but soon became an assistant to Peter Debye at Zürich. It was there that he and Debye developed their theory (the Debye–Hückel theory, in 1923) of electrolytic solutions, elucidating the behavior of strong electrolytes by considering interionic forces, in order to account for their electrical conductivity and their thermodynamic activity coefficients. After spending 1928 and 1929 in England and Denmark, working briefly with Niels Bohr, Hückel joined the faculty of the Technische Hochschule in Stuttgart. In 1935, he moved to Phillips University in Marburg, where he finally was named Full Professor a year before his retirement 1961. He was a member of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science. Hückel is most famous for developing the Hückel method of approximate molecular orbital (MO) calculations on π electron systems, a simplified quantum-mechanical method to deal with planar unsaturated organic molecules. The famous Hückel 4n+2 rule for determining whether ring molecules composed of C=C bonds would show aromatic properties was first stated clearly by Doering in a 1951 article on tropolone.
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