The Birth of Modem Chemistry

Even though the history of crude oil could be traced back by more than two thousand years, real production of crude oil perhaps began in August 27, 1859, when the first industrial-scale crude oil well with a depth of 22 meters was opened in Oil Creek, Pennsylvania. After this first industrial crude oil well was opened, there was the commencement of a rapid development of crude oil production and treatment. Probably, this day could be said to mark the birth of modem cmde oil chemistry. In 1878, the Swedish businessman Alfred B. Nobel together with his brothers formed the Naphtha Company Brothers Nobel. The company extracted the cmde oil in Baku, Russia and transported it to the first cmde oil refineries via the pipelines built by Naphtha Co., which still exists now. 

This venerable book was written in 1935, shortly after the birth of modem quantum mechanics. Nevertheless, it remains one of the best sources for students seeking to gain an understanding of quantum-mechanical principles that are relevant in chemistry and chemical physics. Equally outstanding jobs are done in dealing with both quantitative and qualitative aspects of the subject. More accessible to most chemists than Landau and Lifschitz. 

This chapter serves as an introduction to atmospheric chemistry. It provides an overview of the development of the field, fi om the dawn of modem chemistry to the birth of atmospheric chemistry. Section 1.3 lists the textbooks on chemistry of the atmosphere and atmospheric chemistry that have been published to date. In addition, the literature that served as reference in the writing of this chapter is also listed at the end of this chapter under the bibliography. 

RECORDS of the life of Basilius Valentinus, the Benedictine monk who for his achievements in the chemical sphere has been given the title of Father of Modem Chemistry, are a mass of conflicting evidence. Many and varied are the accounts of his life, and historians seem quite unable to agree as to his exact identity, or even as to the century in which he lived. It is generally believed, however, that 1394 was the year of his birth, and that he did actually join the Benedictine Brotherhood, eventually becoming Canon of the Priory of St. Peter at Erfurt, near Strasburg, although even these facts cannot be proved. 

In the next 2,000 years, the alchemists discovered more and more elements. Till to eighteenth century, Lavoisier named the elements of oxygen and hydrogen, and proved the mass conservation in chemical reactions (Lavoisier et al. 1783). This milestone delivered the birth of chemistry. At the begiiming of nineteenth cenmry, Dalton proposed that each molecule contains a fixed ratio of atoms among several elements (Dalton 1808). This theory was another milestone that opened the gate to modem chemistry. Since then, the atomic and molecular theory became the main stream of chemistry. 

Table 1 An illustrative timeline charting the development of supramolecular chemistry from its roots in solid-state inclusion compounds, through the birth of macrocyclic host-guest chemistry in the 1960s to its modem incarnation in self-assembled materials and nanoscale chemistry.

So, while traditionally crystal engineering had its birth in the topochemistry of SchmidtJ or even the earlier ideas on control of crystal packing presented by Pepinsky in 1955, the modem discipline is simply supramolecular chemistry applied to periodic molecular solids. The aim is the rational design of interesting or... 

The spatial distribution of the electron cloud in a molecular system is investigated quantitatively through the single-particle electron density,which has served as a basic variable in the so-called density functional theory (DFT), an approach that bypasses the many-electron wavefunction, which is the usual vehicle in conventional quantum chemistry or electronic structure theory (for a review of modem developments in quantum chemistry, see reference 7). The theoretical framework of DFT is well known for the associated conceptual simplicity as well as for the computational economy it offers. Another equally important aspect of DFT is its ability to rationalize the existing concepts in chemistry as well as to give birth to newer concepts, which has led to the important field of conceptual DFT. ... 

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