Radial Behavior of Electrostatic Potentials of Atoms and Ions Revisited: Isotropy and Anisotropy

In this paper we revisit earlier work relating to monoatomic atoms and ions published by pioneers in the area of electrostatic potentials. We include plots of the radial distributions of the electrostatic potentials for spherically symmetric atoms and cations, and for singly, doubly and triply negative anions. For atoms with anisotropy in their densities and electrostatic potentials, such as the halonium cations, it is shown how the molecular surface approach for plotting electrostatic potentials complements that achieved by directional radial distributions.