1.1. History and Background Knots and links are all around us (Figure 1). Be they functional
or decorative, we encounter them constantly, when, for example, tying simple bow knots in …

Knot theory is a branch of pure mathematics, but it is increasingly being applied in a variety
of sciences. Knots appear in chemistry, not only in synthetic molecular design, but also in an …

The applications of topological techniques for understanding molecular structures have
become increasingly important over the past thirty years. In this topology text, the reader will …

" Knots are familiar objects. We use them to moor our boats, to wrap our packages, to tie our
shoes. Yet the mathematical theory of knots quickly leads to deep results in topology and …

A homochiral naphthalenediimide-based building block forms in water a disulfide library of
macrocycles containing topological isomers. We attempted to identify each of these isomers …

Knot theory is a kind of geometry, and one whose appeal is very direct because the objects
studied are perceivable and tangible in everyday physical space. It is a meeting ground of …

Entangling strands in a well-ordered manner can produce useful effects, from shoelaces and
fishing nets to brown paper packages tied up with strings. At the nanoscale, non-crystalline …

How and why do molecules tangle or thread? Investigations of molecular knots (knotanes)
may shed some light on the mechanisms of (supra) molecular templation and the folding of …

MOTIVATED by a combination of intellectual curiosity, aesthetics, and hopes of discovering
compounds with novel properties, chemists have been trying for some time to find, in …

Conventional approaches to the synthesis of molecular knots and links mostly rely on metal
templation. We present here an alternative strategy that uses the hydrophobic effect to drive …