Science advances by leaps and bounds rather than linearly in time. I t is not uncommon for a new concept or approach to generate a lot of initial interest, only to enter a quiet period of years or decades and then suddenly reemerge as the focus of new exciting investigations. This is certainly the case of the reduced density matrices (a k a N-matrices or RDMs), whose promise of a great simplification of quantum-chemical approaches faded away when the prospects of formulating the auxil- iary yet essential N-representability conditions turned quite bleak. How- ever, even during the period that...

Science advances by leaps and bounds rather than linearly in time. I t is not uncommon for a new concept or approach to generate a lot of initial interest, only to enter a quiet period of years or decades and then suddenly reemerge as the focus of new exciting investigations. This is certainly the case of the reduced density matrices (a k a N-matrices or RDMs), whose promise of a great simplification of quantum-chemical approaches faded away when the prospects of formulating the auxil- iary yet essential N-representability conditions turned quite bleak. How- ever, even during the period that...