By JOEL M. WILLIAMSEinstein, being probably the most famous modern scientist, has many quotes. While pictured as deeply involved in mathematics as a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, he had some critical opinions of “mathematicians.”
A couple of quotes make the point: “As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality” and “Since the mathematicians have invaded the theory of relativity, I do not understand it myself anymore.”
The veneration of Bohr and subsequent heavy mathematical approaches to the atom generated a myopic approach to the future of the atom with regard to placement of hydrogen in the periodic table and the bonding of atoms into molecules. While physicists were content with the “file-cabinet stacking” of electron in their spdf orbitals to explain spectral data, chemists were unable to explain the geometry of real molecules with the physicists” model.
As G.N Lewis was pointing out in the early 1900s, simple real molecules followed a “rule-of-eight” while the physicists’ model did not. Lewis was concerned about how molecules actually interacted with one another. The physicist/mathematicians were not.
Although a participant in the Solvay conferences and nominated 35 times, G. N. Lewis (b1875, d1946 and professor at Cal Berkeley) never won a Nobel Prize. It should be noted that the Nobelists of the Solvay Conferences were primarily a tight group of physicist/mathematicians. Lewis’ efforts to generate atomic models with “hands-on applicability” were counter to the controlling “mainstream” mathematical approaches to science.
If you are curious, you may find several of my articles about the periodic table, the electronic structure of atoms, and the need even back in the early 1900s to “hybridize” the “physicists’ view” of the electron structure of the atom to make it even the least bit applicable to real-world molecules!
- Creating the Familiar Periodic Table via MCAS Electron Orbital Filling here.
- Parsing the spdf electron orbital model here.
(Those who have studied chemistry will note that the mathematicians simply merged two “not-so-identical” d-orbitals when their math gave 1-too-many solutions and then simple ignored other solutions to make the spdf model a “clean and simple” 1,3,5,7!)