Modern Applications of Flory's "Statistical Mechanics of Chain Molecules"

The implications of a landmark work...

Paul Flory's Statistical Mechanics of Chain Molecules continues to provide crucial guidance for contemporary efforts to understand, manipulate, and design materials and biomolecular systems. Accurate modeling of polymer conformations has facilitated molecular-level design of materials with specific properties or biological functions. This book presents the history behind Flory's book and provides examples of establishing realistic polymer structure property relations made possible by its lessons. Researchers in basic and applied polymer research will find this volume very useful.

Alan E. Tonelli received a BS in Chemical Engineering from the University of Kansas in 1964 and a PhD in Polymer Chemistry from Stanford University in 1968. At Stanford, he was supervised by the late Nobelist Professor Paul J. Flory. He was a member of the Polymer Chemistry Research Department of AT&T Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, NJ, for 23 years. In 1991 he joined the Textile Engineering, Chemistry, & Science Department and the Fiber & Polymer Science Program in the College of Textiles at North Carolina State University. He is currently the INVISTA Professor of Fiber & Polymer Chemistry there. For more than 50 years, his research has dealt with the microstructures, conformations, and material behaviors and properties of polymers and their materials.

Gary Patterson received a BS in Chemistry from Harvey Mudd College in 1968 and a PhD in Physical Chemistry from Stanford University in 1972. He also worked with Paul J. Flory. He was a member of the Chemical Physics Department of AT&T Bell Laboratories from 1972-1984.He has been Professor of Chemical Physics and Polymer Science at Carnegie Mellon University since then. He received the National Academy of Sciences Award for Initiatives in Research in 1981 in recognition of his "contributions to polymer science, particularly in the application of light scattering measurements in the understanding of polymer chain dynamics." He has published many books including Physical Chemistry of Macromolecules (2007), A Prehistory of Polymer Science (2012), Polymer Science from 1935-1953: Consolidating the Paradigm (2014), Paul John Flory: A Life of Science and Friends (2016), Preceptors in Chemistry (2018), and Chemistry in 17th Century New England (2020).

Preface

Chapter 1: A Brief History of the Rotational Isomeric State Paradigm up to 1969, Gary Patterson
Chapter 2: Paul Flory's Statistical Mechanics of Chain Molecules in China, Dacheng Wu and Yuanze Xu
Chapter 3: Polymer Macrostructures and the Kerr Effect, Alan E. Tonelli
Chapter 4: Coupling Flory's View of Conformer Populations with Solid-State NMR to Probe Intimate Mixing in Polymer Blends, Jeffery L. White
Chapter 5: Conformational Characteristics of Polypeptide Chains with Special Focus on the Α- Helix-Sense Inversion, Akihiro Abe and Hidemine Furuya
Chapter 6: Broad Concepts from Polymers Applied to Protein Data, Kejue Jia, Benjamin R. Litterer, and Robert L. Jernigan
Chapter 7: Applications of Basic Ideas of Statistical Mechanics of Chain Molecules to Proteins Exact Counting of Number of Conformations of Compact Chains with Volume Exclusion for Evaluation of Chain Entropies, Andrzej Kloczkowski
Chapter 8: Computational Studies of Mechanical Remodeling of Substrate Proteins by AAA+ Biological Nanomachines, Ruxandra I. Dima and George Stan
Chapter 9: Insights into DNA and Chromatin from Realistic Treatment of the Double Helix, Wilma K. Olson
Chapter 10: Structure-Property Relationships of Polymers, Unraveled by Molecular Orbital, RIS, and Periodic Density Functional Theory Calculations, Yuji Sasanuma
Chapter 11: Depolymerization of Polymeric Sulfur, Travis Kemper, Erich Wimmer, and Bruce E. Eichinger

Editors' Biographies
Author Index
Subject Index