One Hundred Years After the Latimer and Rodebush Paper, Hydrogen Bonding Remains an Elephant!

Abstract

Latimer and Rodebush (J Am Chem Soc 42: 1419–1433, 1920) discussed the ways a Lewis dot structure could be drawn for liquid water and proposed that the H held between two octets constitutes a bond in 1920. When it was realized that the other molecule of life, DNA, owes its double helix structure to specific hydrogen bonds between A–T (two) and C–G (three) base pairs, the interest in hydrogen bonding grew dramatically. While hydrogen bonding could be readily seen in water and DNA, it was not so easy to understand leading to continuous debates about what it means. This article gives a personal perspective of the evolution of hydrogen bonding since the Latimer and Rodebush paper to the recent IUPAC definition of hydrogen bond, published in 2011 and now. Is there a third C–H···O hydrogen bond in the A–T base pair?