I will Relearn Linear Algebra with MIT Opencourseware
My Motivations
Firstly, a bit about myself. I’m a junior at Harvard intending to go into grad school to study organic chemistry after completing college. The winter break has left me with a lot of free time, and now is a good chance to reflect on the first steps I have taken towards my goal of becoming a proficient chemist.
One thought I’ve had throughout college is that I’ve done alright in my chemistry and biology classes, but I kind of got away with only a supreficial understanding from my mathematics requirements I completed freshman year, which were a semester each of multivariable calculus and linear algebra.
For chemists a few decades ago, this might not have been a problem. A former Centennial professor at Chemistry and Chair of the Chemistry Department at Colombia, Koji Nakanishi, once remarked “I liked science. I wasn’t mathematically oriented, so I became an organic chemist.”
However, I think that recent developments in science have largely stripped organic chemists from the luxury of not needing at least a cursory understanding of undergraduate math. The recent news from alphafold, for example, shows how A.I and imformatics can have an immense impact on chemistry research. While chemists may not need to grasp the detailed ins and outs of these technologies…
