A quantum chemical dialogue mediated by textbooks: Pauling's The nature of the chemical bond and Coulson's Valence

Notes and Records of the Royal Society

Volumn 62, Issue 3, 2008, Pages 259-269

  Simões, Ana ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LISBON   (Portugal)

Author keywords

C. A. Coulson; Chemistry; History; Linus Pauling; Quantum; Textbooks

Indexed keywords

EID: 48749118157     PISSN: 00359149     EISSN: 17430178     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1098/rsnr.2007.0051     Document Type: Review

References (62)

1. Roald Hoffmann, 'Kenichi Fukui (1918-1998)', Nature 391, 750 (1998).
2. Anders Lundgren and Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, Communicating chemistry. Textbooks and their audiences 1789-1939 (Science History Publications, Canton, MA, 2000);
3. D. Kaiser (ed.), Pedagogy and the practice of science. Historical and contemporary perspectives (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2005);
4. Antonio Garcia Belmar, José Rámon Bertomeu-Sánchez, Manolis Patiniotis and Anders Lundgren (eds), Textbooks in the scientific periphery (special issue of Science and Education, vol. 15 (7-8), pp. 657-880 (2006)).
5. Mara Beller, Quantum dialogue. The making of a revolution (University of Chicago Press, 1999). In this book the author explores the potential of what she calls a 'dialogical historiography', in which science is viewed as a result of the ways in which scientists respond to and address each other, and scientific theorizing is endowed with a multidirectional dialogical nature. In this article I follow Beller's call for a dialogical historiography while changing from the context of discovery to the so-called context of pedagogy.
6. T. Shinn and R. Whitley (eds), Expository science: forms and functions of popularization (Reidel, Dordrecht, 1985).
7. In this paper I take science first and foremost as an act of communication, be it at the production or at the circulation level, while challenging the distinction between the production of science and its various contexts of communication, which involve the publication of textbooks among its many instances. On the circulation of knowledge, see James Secord, 'Knowledge in transit', Isis 95, 654-672 (2004).
8. In the Introduction to the volume Communicating chemistry (Lundgren and Bensaude-Vincent, op. cit. (note 2)), J. H. Brooke mentions, 'for Hoffman and Lazlo "the conversation reifies the idea; it selects in the mind of the researcher one possibility of many, it is the first existential act in science. All the stronger because the talk is free"', on p. 1.
9. Linus Pauling, 'The dynamical model of the chemical bond and its application to the molecule of benzene', J. Am. Chem. Soc. 48, 1132-1143 (1926);
10. PP, Box 210, LP Notes and Calculations vol. III, 1926-27, 'Work on molecular orbits'.
11. J. H. Van Vleck and A. Sherman, 'Quantum theory of valence', Rev. Mod. Phys. 7, 167-227 (1935).
12. Robert Sanderson Mulliken, 'The electronic structure of polyatomic molecules and valence. VI. On the method of molecular orbits', J. Chem. Phys. 3, 375-378 (1935), at p. 376.
13. PP, Box 115, W Correspondence, File on Wheland, Letters Pauling to Wheland, 30 October 1936, 13 March, 30 March 1937, 28 July 1937, Letter Wheland to Pauling, 29 November 1936.
14. Linus Pauling, The nature of the chemical bond and the structure of molecules and crystals: an introduction to modern structural chemistry (Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, 1939).
15. Linus Pauling, General chemistry. An introduction to descriptive chemistry and modern chemical theories (Freeman, San Francisco, 1947)
16. (this publication resulted from a bound book of lecture notes distributed to students and published as Linus Pauling, General chemistry (California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, 1941));
17. Mary Jo Nye, 'From student to teacher: Linus Pauling and the reformulation of the principles of chemistry in the 1930s', in Lundgren and Bensaude-Vincent, op. cit. (note 2), pp. 397-414;
18. Kostas Gavroglu and Ana Simões, 'One face or many? The role of textbooks in building the new discipline of quantum chemistry', in Lundgren and Bensaude-Vincent, op. cit. (note 2), pp. 415-449.
19. Linus Pauling, College chemistry (Freeman, San Francisco, 1950).
20. Pauling, op. cit. (note 10), at p. 12.
21. Ibid., at p. 404.
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid., at p. 407.
24. Ibid., at p. 408.
25. Ibid.
26. Linus Pauling, The nature of the chemical bond and the structure of molecules and crystals: an introduction to modern structural chemistry, 2nd edn (Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, 1940).
27. PP, Box 399. The nature of the chemical bond 1932-1959.
28. C. A. Coulson, Waves (University Mathematical Texts, Edinburgh, 1941);
29. C. A. Coulson, Electricity (University Mathematical Texts, Edinburgh, 1948);
30. C. A. Coulson, Valence (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1952);
31. C. A. Coulson, The shape and structure of molecules (Oxford Chemistry Series, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1973).
32. C. A. Coulson, 'Quantum theory of the chemical bond', Proc. R. Soc. Edinb. 61, 115-139 (1941).
33. See Buhm Soon Park, 'In the context of "pedagogy": teaching strategy and theory change in chemistry', in Kaiser, op. cit. (note 2), pp. 287-319.
34. C. A. Coulson, 'Representation of simple molecules by molecular orbitals', Q. Rev. Chem. Soc. 1, 144 -178 (1947).
35. C. A. Coulson, 'The meaning of resonance in quantum chemistry', Endeavour 6, 42-47 (1947).
36. Coulson, Valence, op. cit. (note 21), at p. 68.
37. Ibid., at p. vi.
38. See discussion in Ana Simões, 'Textbooks, popular lectures and sermons: the quantum chemist Charles Alfred Coulson and the crafting of science', Br. J. Hist. Sci. 37, 299-342 (2004), at p. 315.
39. CP, Ms Coulson 155, G.16.3, Letter Coulson to Pauling, 1 August 1951. Nevertheless, on 12 May 1952 Pauling wrote to Coulson that he was still eagerly waiting to receive a copy of the book.
40. Linus Pauling, 'Quantum mechanics of valence', Nature 170, 384-385 (1952), at p. 384.
41. PP. Pauling's copy of Valence. Marginalia. Handwritten comments in the blank endpage of the book.
42. CP, Ms Coulson 155, G.16.3, Letter Coulson to Pauling, 8 September 1952.
43. Ibid., Letter Pauling to Coulson, 25 September 1952.
44. PP. Pauling's copy of Valence. Marginalia. Section on 'Hybridization', pp. 191, 208, 209 and 212.
45. Linus Pauling, 'The shared-electron chemical bond', Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. 14, 359-362 (1928).
46. Linus Pauling, 'The nature of the chemical bond. Application of results obtained from the quantum mechanics and from a theory of paramagnetic susceptibility to the structure of molecules', J. Am. Chem. Soc. 53, 1367-1400 (1931).
47. CP, Ms Coulson 155, G.16.3, Letter Pauling to Coulson, 4 November 1952.
48. Ibid., Letter Coulson to Pauling, 14 July 1953.
49. Ibid., Letter Pauling to Coulson, 12 September 1953.
50. L. Pauling, 'The nature of the theory of resonance', in Perspectives in organic chemistry, dedicated to Sir Robert Robinson (ed. Sir Alexander Todd), pp. 1-8 (Interscience, New York, 1956).
51. L. Pauling, The nature of the chemical bond and the structure of molecules and crystals. An introduction to modern structural chemistry, 3rd edn (Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, 1960).
52. L. Pauling, 'Modern structural chemistry. Nobel lecture, December 11, 1954', in Nobel lectures in chemistry 1942-1962, pp. 134-148 (Elsevier, Amsterdam, 1964).
53. Pauling, op. cit. (note 40), at p. vii.
54. L. Pauling, 'The nature of the theory of resonance', in Pauling, op. cit. (note 40), pp. 215-220.
55. Ibid., at pp. 219-220.
56. C. A. Coulson, Valence (Oxford University Press, 1961).
57. C. A. Coulson, 'Recent developments in valence theory', in Fifty years of valence theory (Pure Appl. Chem. 24, 257-287 (1970)), at p. 258.
58. Linus Pauling, preface to The chemical bond (Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, 1967).
59. Linus Pauling, 'Prospects and retrospects in chemical education', J. Chem. Educ. 57, 38-40 (1980).
60. Linus Pauling, 'The place of chemistry in the integration of the sciences', Main Curr. Mod. Thought 7, 108-111 (1950);
61. republished in Barbara Marinacci (ed.), Linus Pauling in his own words, pp. 107-111 (Simon & Schuster, New York, 1995).
62. C. A. Coulson, Christianity in an age of science [Riddell Memorial Lectures] (Oxford University Press, 1953), at p. 37.