ABSTRACT
Hofmann, an Austrian chemist who studied as an architect, invented the ball and stick models in the 19th century. Concept visualizations are metaphors, symbols, and signs that in a chemist’s mind are reconstructed in three-dimensional structures. They are the part of a chemical language that despite its imprecision help people communicate and bring richness and ambiguity. Concept visualization has helped chemists in problem solving since the early days of chemistry. In chemistry, we have two kind of visualization: concept visualization and data visualization. Molecular structure and dynamics belong to the first category, while graphs and renderings from instrumental data such as images from an electronic microscope. As reported in an informative minireview by David S. Goodsell, published in Structure Molecular biology is gradually merging with cell biology as data become increasingly available over the entire scale range from nanometers to millimeters.
