The progress in computer technology during the last 10-15 years has enabled the performance of ever more precise quantum mechanical calculations related to structure and interactions of chemical compounds. However, the qualitative models relating electronic structure to molecular geometry have not progressed at the same pace. There is a continuing need in chemistry for simple concepts and qualitatively clear pictures that are also quantitatively comparable to ab initio quantum chemical calculations. Topological methods and, more specifically, graph theory as a fixed-point topology, provide in...

Over the last decade, increased attention to reaction dynamics, combined with the intensive application of computers in chemical studies, mathematical modeling of chemical processes, and mechanistic studies has brought graph theory to the forefront of research. It offers an advanced and powerful formalism for the description of chemical reactions and their intrinsic reaction mechanisms. Chemical Reaction Networks: A Graph-Theoretical Approach elegantly reviews and expands upon graph theory as applied to mechanistic theory, chemical kinetics, and catalysis.
The authors explore various...

This volume presents the fundamentals of graph theory and then goes on to discuss specific chemical applications. Chapter 1 provides a historical setting for the current upsurge of interest in chemical graph theory. chapter 2 gives a full background of the basic ideas and mathematical formalism of graph theory and includes such chemically relevant notions as connectedness, graph matrix representations, metric properties, symmetry and operations on graphs. This is followed by a discussion on chemical nomenclature and the trends in its rationalization by using graph theory, which has important...