Chemical Problems Historical Periods

Explosives, as a special kind of material, can produce a special state of materials—detonation. In a long historical period of time, explosives liave been used for tlie purposes of destruction, elimination, or decomposition, and tliese purposes still account for tlie main utilization of explosives. In recent years it has been found that explosives can be used for the opposite purposes of construction, creation, and synthesis. Using the liigh pressure, high temperature and high mass speed produced by explosive detonation, new substances or substances with unique features can be produced. Two examples are given in this chapter shock-wave-induced chemical reactions for material synthesis and ultrafme diamond syntliesized by explosive detonation. Much research work l as been done in these fields in recent years, but the quantity and the deptli of these studies are far from sulficient. There remain many unsolved problems and unexplored fields. 

The current volume presents the compilation of splendid contributions distributed over 21 chapters. The very first chapter contributed by Istvan Hargittai presents the historical account of development of structural chemistry. It also depicts some historical memories of scientists presented in the form of their pictures. This historical description covers a vast period of time. Intruder states pose serious problem in the multireference formulation based on Rayleigh-Schrodinger expansion. Ivan Hubac and Stephen Wilson discuss the ciurent development and future prospects of Many-Body Brillouin-Wigner theories to avoid the problem of intruder states in the next chapter. The third chapter written by Vladimir Ivanov and collaborators reveals the development of multireference state-specific coupled cluster theory. The next chapter from Maria Barysz discusses the development and application of relativistic effects in chemical problems while the fifth chapter contributed by Manthos Papadopoulos and coworkers describes electronic, vibrational and relativistic contributions to the linear and nonlinear optical properties of molecules. 

In this article I consider a historical episode which is frequently taken as an example of a successful chemical prediction on the basis of quantum theory, Kragh has already given a detailed discussion of the discovery of hafnium from the point of view of the physics involved. In the present article, I wish to widen the discussion to emphasize the chemical point of view and this will include a brief survey of chemistry textbooks of the period. The main motivation for the present study is to examine the role of physics when it is applied to chemical problems. I will also endeavour to draw some philosophical conclusions from this historical episode regarding the epistemological reduction of chemistry to quantum theory, that is reduction inprartice rather than just in principle. 

For chemistry as a whole, and for each of these chemical disciplines, there developed a historical (indeed, genealogical) legacy and a core literature, as well as a set of shared problems, practices, principles, and values. Thomas Kuhn has treated such disciplinary components as categories of the "paradigm" or the "disciplinary matrix," which are useful in understanding normal science before its transformation during a period of revolution.5 My concern is not revolution but the evolution of eighteenth-century chemical philosophy, whose practitioners aspired to understand the dynamics of matter, into twentieth-century theoretical chemistry, whose practitioners claimed to do so. 

A vital question which remains unanswered, however, is precisely what sort of larger problems quantum chemical research should address. Historically the field has primarily dealt with problems associated with molecular spectroscopy, the methylene problem being a classic example. [4] As a result, the driving force behind nearly all methodological development in quantum chemistry has been applications involving small molecules (fewer than twenty atoms) of rather limited interest to other areas of chemistry or biochemistry. We are currently enjoying a period of symbiotic collaboration between experimentalists and quantum chemists where the fun-... 

For historical searches in the French chemical journal literature, reference should be made to Dyson s list of obsolete journals (26), This list covers obscure titles and short runs published during the nineteenth century, with special attention to the problem of multiple publication, anonymity, briefness of publication period, and changes of title. 

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