We are a new breed of chemists
The public view of chemists is of at least two views. One belongs to the middle aged generation where the Chemistry courses which they took were relatively simple to the "quantum mechanical chemistry" it is today. A chemist is merely a scientific cook, and his job consists of measuring quantities out carefully, being aware of certain sets of reactions, is knowledgeable about chemicals, knows how to assess the subtleties of what's going with respect to the physical aspects of experiments, but is otherwise ignorant and answers to a higher authority.......that is the mathematicians and physicists in maintream science. By ignorant, I'm referring to the public notion that chemists are ridiculously untrained in such dizzying equations and math that the physicists wield.
Chemists are laughable, for the 49 year old Engineer, he remembers his prerequisite Chemistry courses as inferior to the standards that were set by his higher level math and physics courses. Yes, chemists are better off in the lab hoping to come across something that's vaguely useful. Chemists obsess over the quality and cleanliness of their flasks and beakers and a degree in Chemistry is easily attained.
However, those individuals who took introductory Chemistry recently, either for their pre-med major or for some other prerequisite that was specified in their degree program guidelines, know that the content of modern introductory Chemistry courses has complex mathematical formulas to utilize that stem from higher level mathematical proofs derived by such scientists as Josiah Gibbs ("father of thermodynamics") and Schrodinger (one of the foremost contributors to the development of quantum mechanics). This is because the field that is considered to be 'Chemistry' is increasingly becoming 'quantum mechanics', everything is explained in a "quantum" perspective. Acids and bases are explained with relevance to frontier orbitals by Pearson's HSAB theory by maximizing highest occupied molecular and lowest unoccupied molecular orbital interactions. A lot of this type of in depth quantum explanations of general chemistry concepts are detailed in standard inorganic chemistry texts.
Dr. Thomas Albright, The University of Houston, Chem6311
A chemist this day and age must also attain working knowledge of fundamental high tech analytical instrumentation such as the FT-IR, UV-VIS, MS, GC, HPLC, Potentiometer, NMR as well as even more "higher order instrumentations" and be able to analyze the resulting forms of data (e.g. spectral) that are prepared by the devices.
I, for one, took all three calculus courses as well as differential equations. An ACS certified chemist is highly trained in the maths, although he or she may not have been greatly successful in those courses, the opportunity to excel in hard core fields is all there in the undergraduate chemistry program. One can become incredibly versatile in scientific research prowess with an ACS certified Chemistry degree from a good college. It is the quantum side of Chemistry that makes it an irrefutable quantitative science.......and this fact relates to the second prevalent view of what it is to be a chemist.
Revised as whole for clarity 02/02/2007
