The past twenty five years - roughly the period from 1960 to 1985 - have been by all measures among the most exciting and challenging times of our science. The increasing sensitivity of chemical instrumentation, the introduction of the routine use of computers for data reduction and of microprocessors for instrumental control, the wide-spread utilization of lasers, and the disappearance of traditional disciplinary boundaries between scientific fields are but a few of the examples one could cite to support the introductory contention. Almost all of these developments have had their impact on...