For nearly 40 years, organic chemists have been fascinated by the idea of aromatic molecules that have the topology of a Mobius strip. No such molecule has been isolated -- until now. The first example of a Mobius aromatic molecule to be synthesizedand isolated is described by Ajami et al. on page 819 of this issue. Although topologies resembling a Mobius strip (Fig. 1) are not unknown in chemistry, a stable aromatic molecule with this configuration had escaped fabrication because the obligatory twist could always be circumvented by a change in shape of the molecule. The authors have overcome this difficulty by assembling their molecule from two fragments, one of which was rigidly constructed in such a way as to enforce a twist when it was linkedto the other.
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