Topics in Structural Chemistry through After-Dinner Humor

Some of the best stories told by Jack Dunitz in after-dinner speeches introduce comments and personal views on aspects of contemporary structural chemistry: crystal structure analysis and prediction, facts and fallacies in the study of intermolecular bonding, and theories of crystal formation, from nucleation to growth. The role of X-ray crystallography in the determination of the structure of matter at a molecular level is highlighted, with broad and pervasive bearings on present-day applications in materials science. A short essay presents the results of molecular simulations on the stability of small molecular clusters with crystalline structure: the future seems to lay not in the analysis of crystal structures after they are formed, but in the study of autocatalytic insurgence of long-range ordering during nucleation processes.