Ronald Gillespie
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Ronald J. Gillespie (August 21, 1924), a chemistry teacher at McMaster University, specializes in the field of Molecular Geometry in chemistry. Therefore, most of his research is theoretical.
Ronald has done extensive work on expanding the idea of the Valence Shell Electron Pair Repulsion (VSEPR) model of Molecular Geometry and setting the rules for assigning numbers and such. He has written several books on this VSEPR topic in chemistry. Gillespie has also done extensive work on interpreting the covalent radius of fluorine. The covalent radius of most atoms is found by taking half the distance between the bond lengths of two atoms of the same kind through a single bond in the neutral molecule. Calculating the covalent radius for fluorine is more difficult because of its high electronegativity compared to its small atomic radius size. Ronald Gillespie’s work on the bond length of fluorine focuses on theoretically determining the covalent radius of fluorine by examining its covalent radius when it is attached to several different atoms.
[edit] Publications
- Chemical Bonding and Molecular Geometry: From Lewis to Electron Densities (Topics in Inorganic Chemistry) by Ronald J. Gillespie and Paul L. A. Popelier
- Atoms, Molecules and Reactions: An Introduction to Chemistry by Ronald J. Gillespie
- Chemistry by Ronald J. Gillespie, David Humphreys, Colin Laird, and E. A. Robinson