A novel approach to molecular similarity

We review briefly the general problem of assessing the similarity between one molecule and another. We propose a novel approach to the quantitative estimation of the similarity of two electron distributions. The procedure is based on momentum space concepts, and avoids many of the difficulties associated with the usual position space definitions. Results are presented for the model systems CH3CH2CH3, CH3OCH3, CH3SCH3, H2O and H2S.