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I have spent over 50 years building, remodeling, and painting houses and packing boxes. From these activities, I have marveled at the beautiful 3-D symmetry created by craftsmen and nature and its aesthetic appeal to artists. I have also spent 45 years mentally and physically manipulating chemical compounds and atoms. Much of this time has been spent on models generated by others - many of whom have received Nobel prizes for their efforts.

In recent years, I have wondered about some of the models engendered by those fabled masters. What I have found is that some, beautiful as they may be, are inherently limited. They are limited because they fail to accommodate 3-D components that can not be rendered from 2-D. The masters have decreed that things are different at the atomic level even though this level formulates the substances of our real world! This is a stretch of faith that I no longer accept.

Finding the accepted electronic models unsatisfactory in explaining some of my own experimental results, I set out a decade ago to find a model that would explain them while remaining consistent with previous data. To do so, I had to think outside the ?box? created by the legends of science. My 3-D approach has allowed me to see atoms from a different vantage point - a vantage point that has gone unexplored since those mavens accepted OR-duality and electron spin-reversal to justify homophilic cohabitation of orbital space by electron pairs.

• PhD, physical organic chemistry, Northwestern U.