Devoted readers of this blog (assuming there are any) must be wondering where all the chemistry has gone. Willock’s book convinced me of the importance of group theory in understand what solutions we have of the Schrodinger equation. Fortunately (or unfortunately) I have the mathematical background to understand group characters and group representations, but I found Willock’s presentation of just the mathematical results unsatisfying.
So I’m delving into a few math books on the subject. One is “Representations and Characters of Groups” by James and Liebeck (which provides an application to molecular vibration in the last chapter starting on p. 367). It’s clear, and for the person studying this on their own, does have solutions to all the problems. Another is “Elements of Molecular Symmetry” by Ohrn, which I liked quite a bit. But unfortunately I got stymied by the notation M(g)alpha(g) on p. 28. In particular, it’s not clear to me if the A in equation (4.12) and (4.13) are the same thing.
I’m also concurrently reading two books on Computational Chemistry, but the stuff in there is pretty cut and dried and I doubt that anyone would be interested in comments as I read them. One is “Essential Computational Chemistry” by Cramer (2nd edition). The other is “Computational Organic Chemistry” by Bachrach. The subject is a festival of acronyms (and I thought the army was bad) and Cramer has a list of a mere 284 of them starting on p. 549. On p. 24 of Bachrach there appears the following “It is at this point that the form of the functionals begins to cause the eyes to glaze over and the acronyms appear to be random samplings from an alphabet soup.” I was pleased to see that Cramer still thinks 40 pages or so of Tom Lowry and Cathy Richardson’s book is still worth reading on molecular orbital theory, even though it was 24 years old at the time Cramer referred to it. They’re old friends from grad school. I’m also pleased to see that Bachrach’s book contains interviews with Paul Schleyer (my undergraduate mentor). He wasn’t doing anything remotely approaching computational chemistry in the late 50s (who could?). Also there’s an interview with Ken Houk, who was already impressive as an undergraduate in the early 60s.
Maybe no one knows how all of the above applies to transition metal organic chemistry, which has clearly revolutionized synthetic organic chemistry since the 60’s, but it’s time to know one way or the other before tackling books like Hartwig.
Another (personal) reason for studying computational chemistry, is so I can understand if the protein folding people are blowing smoke or not. Also it appears to be important in drug discovery, or at least is supporting Ashutosh in his path through life. I hope to be able to talk intelligently to him about the programs he’s using.
So stay tuned.
Chemiotics II 