Chemical sciences subdisciplines

Many scientists make use of nuclear magnetic resonance in a variety of subdisciplines in the chemical sciences. It has been a source of great empirical information since its inception people were able to use the Grant-Paul equa-tions 8,49 of the early 1960s to calculate NMR shieldings for simple systems long before any of the underlying physical causes were truly understood. As... 

Parallel to the rapid development of instrumental analytical chemistry came the explosive development of computer science and technology, a very powerful tool for the solution of the above problems. It became easier for chemists, and especially analytical chemists, to apply computers and advanced statistical and mathematical methods in their own working fields. It is, therefore, not surprising that these two revolutionary developments led to the formation of a new chemical subdiscipline, called chemometrics. 

Geochemistry deals with chemical species, reactions, and processes in the lithosphere and their interactions with the atmosphere and hydrosphere. The branch of geochemistry that explores the complex interactions among the rock-water-air-life (and human) systems that determine the chemical characteristics of the surface environment is environmental geochemistry. Obviously, geochemistry and its environmental subdiscipline are very important in environmental science and in considerations of industrial ecology. 

Twentieth-century chemistry has evolved into numerous subdisciplines closely connected with subdisciplines from the other sciences. Physical chemistry, chemical physics, biochemistry, clinical chemistry, and nuclear chemistry are well known examples. [1] The connections to the earth sciences and the astronomical sciences are much less known and have received relatively little historical attention. Yet these interdisciplinary fields are extremely rich and have histories that are rewarding subjects for the historian of science. The purpose of the present paper is to provide a historical introduction to what is currently known as cosmochemistry, or the chemistry of the universe. In one sense, this is a modern branch of science, established only in the 1950s, but it can be plausibly traced back to the late nineteenth century, if not earlier. It can even be argued that it dates back to about 1800, when meteorites were first subjected to chemical analysis. 

Mark s use of the word science not only arose from his own personal taste but also reflected the emergence of polymer physics as a new subdiscipline. By the late 1930s, the limitations of Staudinger s organic-chemical approach were recognized by physical chemists and physicists alike. Organic chemistry alone could not solve the whole problem of macromolecules. Clearly, the organic chemists static views of... 

A solution was to rename the subdiscipline one belonged to. The new name would avoid the chemical adjective. Surface science thus thrived during the 90s. Another renaming occurred with the nanoscience and nanotechnology bandwagon.30... 

But in addition to any pedagogical implications, the relationship between chemistry and physics has become increasingly important in philosophy of science. In particular, the recent growth of the philosophy of chemistry as a distinct subdiscipline has been based to some extent on examining the question of the reduction of chemical laws, chemical models, and representations, such as the periodic system, to fundamental physics. 

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