Customer Reviews

Quantum Mechanics in Chemistry

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A great book for chemistry students (advanced undergraduate or graduate) who have a thorough understanding of the basics of quantum mechanics. The book begins with a quick review and quickly goes into methods and theory that are of interest to chemists i.e, many electron and molecular techniques. They also provide a nice collection of problems...with solutions! It is a very clearly written and well thought out book...highly recommended. For those who need a more elementary approach, check out "Introduction to Quantum Mechanics in Chemistry" by the same authors.

I bought this book to review for PhD candidacy exams and look back on it once every six months for reference. This book explains in a very clear way the most fundamental concepts in theoretical chemistry, particularly dynamics. It touches very little on quantum chemistry, ie electronic structure theory, as there are many other books on that topic available already. The coverage of Fermi's golden rule and response theory is very accessible.

Even at $50, this would be the best money one could spend on a graduate level textbook on quantum dynamics. I can't imagine someone in the field not finding this book useful at almost any stage of their career.

This book is not so easy for beginners. But if you are somewhat familiar to introductory quantum physics (or quantum chemistry) and mathematics (maybe introductory linear algebra and differential equations), this will be helpful for you to understand the applications of quantum mechanics to chemistry.
This book offers many of topics to you, especially related to spectroscopy and kinetics. Not only that, but also it tells you about the theories (Fermi's golden rule, group theory, etc.) to understand those things. If you are interested in the details and foundations about Hartree-Fock equations, I'd like to recommend "Modern Quantum Chemistry: Introduction to Advanced Electronic Structure Theory". (And other books concerned about computational chemistry)
The only problem is that the formulas are not derived in detail. Of course there are so many equations, I think, but much more formulas are needed to explain all the things clearly. However, you can fill up the gaps between the expressions, if you are the one satisfies the condition what I mentioned in the first paragraph.

This book isn't for the first time QM experience. It skips right past all the basics and starts with two awful chapters on group theory that just seem out of place in the context of the rest of the book. I'm really not sure why they are there... After that, this book is golden. Its not overly thorough, but covers quite a bit of ground in the 300+ pages you get. I love the style, coming from a physical chemistry perspective. This book cant be beat for the price. I only wish it were longer. Not taking the group theory stuff into consideration, (you can just skip it... Its not used anywhere else in the book) this is definitely 5 stars for the price.

This book is an excellent choice
for undergraduate and graduate students
of Chemistry interested in understanding the principles of Quantum Mechanics applied to Chemistry.
It is didactally excellent, clear in explanations. Besides exhibiting many worked propblems, it proposes many questions and new problems to be solved.
Congratulations to the authors.
Antônio Brant