Bent (December 21, 1926 – January 3, 2015)[1] was a professor of physical chemistry who studied molecular orbitals to develop atomic hybridization and valence bond theories.
[2] Bent's rule, which predicts the orbital hybridization of a central atom as a function of the electronegativities of the substituents attached to it, is named for him.
In thermodynamics he developed a global approach now known as "entropy analysis" for the entropy component of thermodynamic free energy in relation to the second law of thermodynamics and the spontaneity of various chemical processes.
[3] Bent was also interested in the periodic laws of the elements and promoted the left-step periodic table based on orbital-filling rules.
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