EXPERIMENTS ON THE DYNAMICS OFMOLECULAR PROCESSES: A Chronicle of Fifty Years

This paper reviews the way in which, in the Italy of the years immediately afterWorldWar II, interest in the dynamics of molecular processeswas awakened. The narrative begins with the work of a small number of chemists and physicists who, in the initial stage, interacted closely. In the course of the years, their interests diverged and younger people joined the newly formed groups. Even now, after half a century, a common approach can still to be seen regarding how to attack problems and perform experiments. Experimental work is discussed, bringing out the common viewpoint of fields as diverse as mass spectrometry, isotope effects, chemical kinetics, molecular beams, molecule-molecule interactions, molecule-ion interactions, molecule-surface