Hund's rules
Reglas de Hund
- Date
- 1925 · confidence high
- Place
- Göttingen, Germany
- Credited to
- Friedrich Hund
- Field
- Matter & energy
What was discovered
Working as a private lecturer in Göttingen, Hund formulated three rules to predict the ground state of multi-electron atoms: among them, that the lowest-energy configuration maximizes the number of parallel unpaired spins.
Not to be confused with molecular orbital theory, also associated with Hund and already in the catalog (1928-1932): Hund's rules are earlier and concern isolated atoms, not molecules.
What it led to
- Prediction of electron configurations in chemistry
- Explanation of orbital filling order
- Basis for studying magnetic properties of atoms and ions