The Pauling’s form for the overlap repulsive energy is used to calculate the sizes of isoelectronic divalent ions in MgO, CaS, SrSe and BaTe crystals by minimising the next nearest neighbour repulsive interaction. The radii calculated by this method differ significantly from the conventional sets of ionic radii in a consistent way, being larger for cations and smaller for anions. The polarizability-radius cube relation is also utilized to calculate the electronic polarizabilities of ions. The electronic polarizabilities, thus obtained agree with the values determined from the refractivity measurements.
