ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the National Bureau of Standards’s Photochemistry of Small Molecules, which relates the context in which the publication appeared, its impact on science, technology, and the general public, and details about the lives and work of the author. In his Photochemistry of Small Molecules Hideo Okabe provides an elegant discussion of the spectroscopy of atoms and molecules as well as of the rotational, vibrational, and electronic energy states. Okabe's subject, the photochemistry of small molecules, came into prominence in the 1960–1980 period just at the time when planetary modelers were struggling to provide a quantitative understanding of the chemistry of the atmospheres of the giant planets and their moons. Prior to Okabe's work at NBS, little attention was given to photochemical requirements for measurements in the vacuum ultraviolet, such as spectral purity of light sources, appropriate window materials, and the effect of temperature on the transmittance of these materials.
