Chemistry and Mathematics, reversibility, reproducibility, executability.

1. I am a chemist but along my academic journey, I learned some mathematics and simple programming. I love chemistry, but I don't hate mathematics.

2. Chemical operations are usually irreversible; mathematical operations, on the other hand are reversible.

3. Consider the operation of adding sugar to coffee as a representation of a chemical operation. If the chemist made an unintentional mistake and accidentally added salt instead of sugar, then that cup of coffee is pretty much irreversibly ruined, and there is pretty much little or no way to "fix" the mistake. Likewise in a chemical plant, if a mistake happens, then it might not be salvagable. Not all mistakes are unfixable, it all depends on the exact nature of the system.

4. In mathematics, most mistakes are reversible. If one accidentally entered the wrong number into an equation, he or she can simply click the "UNDO" button on his software, and correct his mistake. Even if there is no "UNDO" function, one can SAVE the mistake under a different filename, close the file, and RELOAD the original file.

5. In mathematics, operations are usually if not always reproducible. One can add two numbers 100 times and get the same result everytime. In chemistry, this is only true if a system has been fully optimized.

6. A mathematician wanting to test (execute) his idea usually needs only a computer, software, and access to the literature. An organic chemist wanting to execute (test) his idea needs the whole physical infrastructure-- ingredients, instruments and apparati.

7. The inherent features of chemistry that I described above-- irreversibility, reproducibility, and executability are also reasons that chemistry is unique. One such uniqueness is the possibility of unintentional discovery.

8. James Sumner made a careless irreversible mistake when he unintentionally left a flask of enzyme solution near the window during the winter of 1926, to unexpectedly find that the enzymes crystallized from solution. He went on to win the Chemistry Nobel Prize in 1946

8. Sir Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin, the world's first antibiotic, by accident. It saved the lifes of many Allied soldiers during World War II. The discovery of penicillin is a historical moment in medicine.

9. I write this post to highlight a point: there are two types of science. The first is very logical, reproducible, reversible, predictable and computable. Mathematics and computer programmming belong to this class. The scientists in this group are theoreticians, and deal mostly with ideas and theories.

10. The second type is what I call wet science: where the scientist deal with the physical tangible things. The scientists in this group are experimentalists. They are also logical, but they usually have an intuition about irreproducibility and unpredictability of what they do.

11. Interestingly enough, there is a branch of chemistry called computational chemistry aka theoretical chemistry where the chemist uses a computer to study and predict the behavior of chemicals.