Nature Chemistry | The Sceptical Chymist

Chemiotics: Apologies to Borodin

Posted on behalf of Retread

Can you picture yourself spending a week with a group of people who can’t tell an Angstrom from arugula, some of whom are wary of all “chemicals”. Many highly analytic types (mathematicians, computer scientists, physicists, electrical engineers and even chemists) do just that and enjoy it immensely. I speak of adult amateur chamber music festivals (or ‘band camp for adults’ as one of my friend’s grandkids calls them). After 35 years of them, I only met the 5th chemist this year. They are vastly outnumbered by the other analytics, particularly mathematicians and physicists.

Participants are highly educated for the most part, but the most talented cellist this year was a moving-company man who hauls furniture around for a living, and I still remember playing with a marvellous 300-pound violist years ago who was a jail matron.

If you were an aspiring organic chemist in the early 60s, the bible was “Mechanism and Structure in Organic Chemistry” by Edwin S. Gould, a physical chemist amazingly enough. He also happens to be an excellent violinist and I had the pleasure of playing with him a few years ago. He’s still active in research although he received his PhD from UCLA in 1950. Who says chemicals are toxic!?

Occasionally the two cultures do clash, and a polymer chemist friend is driven to distraction by a gentle soul who is quite certain that “chemicals” are a very bad thing. For the most part, everyone gets along. Despite the very different mindsets, all of us became very interested in music early on, long before any academic or life choices were made.

So, are the analytic types soulless automatons producing mechanically perfect music which is emotionally dead? Are the touchy-feely types sloppy technically and histrionic musically? A double-blind study would be possible, but I think both groups play pretty much the same (less well than we’d all like, but with the same spirit and love of music).

I wonder why chemists are so outnumbered in this group? It’s been downhill ever since Alexander Borodin. Perhaps a larger sample is needed. Any thoughts?

Comments

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    Neil said:

    I thought I could trump the PhD in 1950, having met Jim Collman at Stanford during my lab visit this summer – but he got his in 1958! He is certainly still active in research – active enough to publish a paper in Science last year.

    On the musical theme, I know that one of my former lecturers (the sadly recently deceased Prof. Lyn Williams https://www.dur.ac.uk/chemistry/staff/late/lyn_williams/ was a keen musician, who sang in the Northern Sinfonia Chorus and regularly played the organ at a number of churches. He was also an authority on nitrosation reactions, and is a great loss – he had been at the department since 1963.

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    THX 1138 said:

    I have heard that William Lipscomb is an excellent violinist. Supposedly he has given some performances at the Lindau conferences, several years back.

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    Retread said:

    Interesting about Lipscomb. An ex-girlfriend got her PhD from him and I never heard about it (or have forgotten if I did). I really didn’t get into amateur chamber music until after medical school, and didn’t have time (or the instrument) to play in grad school.

    Another member of the department back then (William Klemperer) was related to the famous conductor Otto Klemperer.

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    Steve Davey said:

    Christian Bochet who is a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland plays violin with the Geneva Symphony Orchestra…top that!

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    Wavefunction said:

    Interesting factoid about Gould. I was an aspiring organic chemist in the early 2000s and still found his book immensely insightful if a little outdated.