Fritz London

Fritz Wolfgang London (March 7, 1900–March 30, 1954) was a German-born American physicist. London's early work with Heitler ^[1] on chemical bonding is now treated in any textbook on physical chemistry. This paper was the first to properly explain the bonding in a homonuclear molecule as H<sub>2</sub>. It is no coincidence that the Heitler-London work appeared shortly after the introduction of quantum mechanics by Heisenberg and Schrödinger, because quantum mechanics was crucial in their explanation of the covalent bond. Another necessary ingredient was the realization that electrons are indistinguishable, as expressed in the Pauli principle.