Theoretical chemistry seeks to provide theories that explain chemical observations. Often, it uses mathematical and computational methods. Quantum chemistry, the application of quantum mechanics to the understanding of valency, is a major component of theoretical chemistry. Other major components include molecular dynamics, statistical thermodynamics and theories of electrolyte solutions, reaction networks, polymerization and catalysis.
Read more about Theoretical Chemistry: An Alternative Approach, Branches of Theoretical Chemistry, Closely Related Disciplines, Bibliography, Quotations
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“The desire to serve the common good must without fail be a requisite of the soul, a necessity for personal happiness; if it issues not from there, but from theoretical or other considerations, it is not at all the same thing.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“Science with its retorts would have put me to sleep; it was the opportunity to be ignorant that I improved. It suggested to me that there was something to be seen if one had eyes. It made a believer of me more than before. I believed that the woods were not tenantless, but choke-full of honest spirits as good as myself any day,—not an empty chamber, in which chemistry was left to work alone, but an inhabited house,—and for a few moments I enjoyed fellowship with them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)