I took a pistol course in undergrad, and while I was a poor marksman I enjoyed the experience.

“Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one's youth.” –Psalm 127:4

Quantum computing gets a lot of attention these days. In this post, I want to examine the application of quantum computing to quantum chemistry, with a focus on determining whether there are any business-viable applications today.

In 2019, ChemistryWorld published a “wish list” of reactions for organic chemistry, describing five hypothetical reactions which were particularly desirable for medicinal chemistry.

(in the spirit of Dale Carnegie and post-rat etiquette guides)

“A cord of three strands is not easily broken.” —Ecclesiastes 4:12

ICYMI: Ari and I announced our new company, Rowan! We wrote an article about what we're hoping to build, which you can read here. Also, this blog is now listed on The Rogue Scholar, meaning that posts have DOIs and can be easily cited.

The Pauling model for enzymatic catalysis states that enzymes are “antibodies for the transition state”—in other words, they preferentially bind to the transition state of a given reaction, rather than the reactants or products.

Since the ostensible purpose of organic methodology is to develop reactions that are useful in the real world, the utility of a method is in large part dictated by the accessibility of the starting materials.

TW: stereotypes about molecular dynamics. In his fantastic essay “The Two Cultures,” C. P. Snow observed that there was (in 1950s England) a growing divide between the academic cultures of science and the humanities: He reflects on the origins of this phenomenon, which he contends is new to the 20th century, and argues that it ought to be opposed: Snow’s essay is wonderful: his portrait of a vanishing cultural intellectual unity should

An important problem with simulating chemical reactions is that reactions generally take place in solvent, but most simulations are run without solvent molecules.