Maths for Chemistry

When a colleague retired five years ago, I 'inherited' his first-year maths course. Initially, I used his notes while teaching, but was never happy. It looked like maths, smelt like maths, tasted like maths and did not mention chemistry once.

I was soon desperate to find alternative material. I looked at accumulated resources on my own shelves - collected ad hoc or, again inherited; I looked on the internet; I pestered the local bookshop, yet I found nothing suitable. The majority of texts had titles like 'maths for chemists,' but chemistry was mentioned very rarely, if at all.

I produced a few short hand outs for my undergraduates to demonstrate how the maths before them could be useful: each was essentially a grid of mathematical functions and the main chemical equations in which they could be found.

The results were electric. Student's motivation was enhanced out of all proportion, because they could now see the relevance. I started including chemical structures and saw further increases in understanding and hence ability. The failure rate more than halved, yet I had not removed anything from the syllabus.

During the following year, I produced a draft of this book, comprising a large number of worked examples, wherever possible including chemical examples. After each lecture with this new material, I completely rewrote each chapter, incorporating all their comments and seeking to anticipate the typical questions an undergraduate class might ask. The number of worked examples is now vastly higher than anything available anywhere.

Having iterated this process a few times, the final text of the book bore very little resemblance to the initial hand outs. It is now though, I believe, the most user friendly textbook on maths for chemists on the market today.

Paul Monk
May 2007