Potential Energy Functions in Conformational Analysis

Book excerpt: I get by with a little help from my friends The Beatles: Sgt. Pepper This book should have been in Danish. Any decent person must be able to express himself in his mother's tongue, also when expounding scientific ideas and results. Had I stuck to this ideal, the book would have been read by very few people, and, indeed, appreciated by even fewer. Having it publ ished in English gives me a chance to fulfill one ambition: to be read and judged by the international scientific community. Another reason is that the majority of my professional friends are regrettably unread in Danish, just as I am in Hebrew, Finnish and even Italian. I want to deprive them of the most obvious excuse for not reading my opus. Like a man I admired, I will first of all thank my wife. In his autobiography, Meir Weisgal, then President of the Weizmann Insti tute of SCience, wrote about his wife: "In addition to her natural endowments - which are considerable - she was a more than competent part-tim~ secretary." He wrote on, and so shall I. The book has been edited by my wife. So if the reader finds the layout pleasant as, in actual fact, I myself do, Birgit is to be praised. If there are blemishes, I am to be blamed for not having caught them.