The inductive effect in the anilinium ion

Abstract

The perturbation by the ammonio group -NH₃ ⁺ is represented by an electrostatic potential with a short-range repulsion added to the coulomb attraction. The apparent conflict between the lack of influence by -NH₃ ⁺ on the spectrum of benzene and the large effect on its reactivity is reconciled under reasonable assumptions concerning the potential, the effective dielectric constant in the molecule and the transition moments of benzene transitions. The method of calculation is novel, in that it is not based in principle on explicit forms of molecular wave functions; in practice however explicit wave functions have been used to evaluate certain transition moments required as starting data.