The Journey through the History of Chemistry Ends

Some (random) thoughts about what we learned along the way

I’ve been teasing the end of this series for a while now, and it feels weird to say it, but we’re here. Linus Pauling’s work formed the basis of modern chemical knowledge — it’s a little reductive, but for the most part, much of the research performed after that has simply developed his ideas further. I’m not trying to downplay any of the chemistry research that has followed (my PhD work certainly falls into that category), but the more I think about it, the more I realize it was all possible because of Pauling’s mic drop. It’s too bad he went all homeopathic on us.

Speaking of PhDs…

It’s “fun” to philosophize about getting a PhD in light of this revelation. The general process behind getting one is not only to advance your own knowledge in a very specific corner of science, but also to bring knowledge to the rest of the world. When crafting a research proposal or writing up some findings for a journal article, one of the questions we’re taught to answer is “what problem are you trying to solve?” or “what hole are you trying to fill?” Looking back at my personal experience and armed with some new perspectives, I can honestly say that my work could be viewed as further developing ideas that Pauling proposed originally in his American Chemical Society papers published almost a century ago.