Valence Theory
Somewhat surprisingly Eduard Study is known by practitioners of quantum chemistry. Like James Joseph Sylvester, Paul Gordan believed that invariant theory could contribute to the understanding of chemical valence. In 1900 Gordan and his student G. Alexejeff contributed an article on an analogy between the coupling problem for angular momenta and their work on invariant theory to the Zeitschrift für Physikalische Chemie (v. 35, p. 610). In 2006 Wormer and Paldus summarized Study's role as follows:
- The analogy, lacking a physical basis at the time, was criticised heavily by the mathematician E. Study and ignored completely by the chemistry community of the 1890's. After the advent of quantum mechanics it became clear, however, that chemical valences arise from electron-spin couplings ... and that electron spin functions are, in fact, binary forms of the type studied by Gordan and Clebsch.
Read more about this topic: Eduard Study
Famous quotes containing the word theory:
“We commonly say that the rich man can speak the truth, can afford honesty, can afford independence of opinion and action;and that is the theory of nobility. But it is the rich man in a true sense, that is to say, not the man of large income and large expenditure, but solely the man whose outlay is less than his income and is steadily kept so.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)