Cheap Introduction to Quantum Mechanics, With Applications to Chemistry, (Book) (Linus Carl, Pauling) Price

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Customer Reviews of Introduction to Quantum Mechanics, With Applications to Chemistry,

Philosophy: By Socrates, Quantum Chemistry: By Linus Pauling
How would an "Introduction to Philosophy" by Socrates or a "Basics of the Piano" by Mozart sound like? This is something similar. Linus Pauling, the unprecedented pioneer of the application of Quantum Mechanics to Chemistry, had written this book in the 1930s as perhaps the first introduction to QM for Chemists, supported by his colleague, E Bright Wilson, a brilliant chemist in his own right. A generation of Chemists grew up learning from this book, and its content is as relevant and articulate today as it was then. Hundreds of Quantum Chemistry books, some of which are excellent, have been written in the times since it was first published. But this book still retains an incomparable flavour that brings out the fundamental nature of QM and Chemical Bonding. I have to admit that I found this book slightly difficult, because Pauling and Wilson, although being extremely lucid, never compromise on the Math. But gradually I learnt that this is the kind of book which belongs in the same category of, say, Ernest Eliel's stereochemistry book. That means that every moment you spent on it will be worth it, even if it takes you a very long time to go through it. This is one of those books where every word is carefully thought and then stated, making the journey difficult at places, but always rewarding. And why not. It is hard to imagine anyone else writing with so much confidence on the topic. So it is important not to gloss over this book quickly and then discard it as being dry, but persist in reading it and get insight out of it. The book opens with a discussion of Lagrangian mechanics and discusses some simple examples of its applications. It then moves on to the basic principles of QM, and comes to the Hydrogen molecule, which was the pinnacle of succcess for the Physicists. I think that this book has the best discussion of the H molecule ever written. I have seen other excellent Quantum Chemistry books giving a reference to this work whenever they discuss the H molecule. Moreover, I believe that a thorough understanding of the H molecule is of paramount importance for understanding any further application of QM to Chemistry. Discussion of this molecule opens the door to understanding orbitals, spherical harmonics, angular momentum and all the important concepts in theoretical Chemistry. So the book will score top points for this alone. Later on there are excellent discussions of the Variational Method, Perturbation theory and finally the various important approximations like Hartree-Fock theory and the structure of molecules. The appendices deal with detailed discussions of derivation and some mathematical topics. All in all, a clear and extremely lucid presentation, well worth every moment you can spend on it, by one of the greatest scientists of all time.

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Oldie but goodie
This is a great, simple presentation of the Schroedinger viewpoint. There is no Dirac representation and no matrix mechanics. However, there is much to be liked about this book and it is a pleasure to read. Those who are baffled completely by quantum mechanics will find this an enlightening introduction and a simple understandable place to start. This is another one of those lesser known gems.

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Simple with everything
If you are an undergraduate and you want everything you need, this is the book. The lack of matrix mechanics makes this book unsuitable for serious graduate students, though. I think it would actually be best for 1st or 2nd year serious undergraduate chemists who are well acquainted with differential equations.