Department of Chemistry

If you were to tell your friends or family that you picked chemistry as a major because it is one of the most dynamic, diverse, and growing scientific disciplines, they would no doubt think that you were crazy.

Nonetheless, you would be right! The fact that you are reading this section in the handbook means that you are either just reading things at random or that you are genuinely wondering whether chemistry might be right for you, in spite of the fact that the mere mention of the word “chemistry” is enough to make the average person break into a cold sweat in remembrance of a painful past experience.

Chemistry is definitely one of those fields where the actual doing is much more rewarding than initial exposure to the subject through introductory classes can ever suggest. In a sense, it would be like trying to imagine the prose of Gabriel Garcia Marquez after just learning how to read “Big Bird’s Introduction to the Alphabet” (with apologies to the Department of Comparative Literature). The reason that the real doing of chemistry is so exciting is that we work at the length scale where all the action occurs that determines how everything works. This means that chemistry is ultimately at the bottom of a million different things—things like how functional MRI can tell what you’re thinking, how the earth’s atmosphere responds to the industrial activities of the human race, how living tissue sticks to artificial body implants, how gigantic molecules assemble themselves inside your body to perform complex biological tasks, how nature programs cells in organisms to live and to die, and why the Titanic sank.

The process of education in chemistry first takes you through learning the language and the basics, usually during your freshman and sophomore years. In your junior year, you get into the heart of the intellectual discipline, learning more in depth about the foundations of chemistry, such as thermodynamics, kinetics, and the physics of molecules and atoms. You can select from a number of different options for your required classes depending on how you see your interests developing (described in the Undergraduate Announcement). Unlike many chemistry departments, Princeton’s program is not organized around the old-fashioned model of non-interacting sub-disciplines, but rather is small enough and interactive enough to be truly interdisciplinary in character. We believe that the exciting frontiers in chemistry and many other scientific pursuits lie at the boundaries between different fields. The really interesting problems in science lie in areas that are too complex to be understood in the language or context of a single discipline. Chemistry, both at Princeton and elsewhere, has been particularly responsive to this modern way of looking at the scientific process, which is why it is indeed a dynamic, diverse, and growing field of study.

Many students get their first taste of chemical research working in a department lab during the summer after either the freshman or sophomore year. (The Department of Chemistry conducts a summer program that enables interested undergraduates to spend nine weeks immersed in original research.) Others begin their research as part of their fall and spring junior independent work. In many cases, this research serves as an introduction to what they ultimately will do for their senior theses. Students select possible research topics by listening to talks given by faculty about the work in their research groups. The experience of writing the senior thesis, and especially learning the process of tackling a real scientific problem and coming up with a solution, is, for many of our undergraduates, the most rewarding part of their education. The relationship you develop with your adviser in this process can last a lifetime. If you are unsure about chemistry as a major, we suggest you go to the chemistry library and look at the senior theses from the past few years to see what topics we are working on as a department and what might interest you. This information can also be found on our Web page at www.princeton.edu/~chemdept/.

Take time to survey the individual Web pages for the research groups of our faculty members. You can also access the information by searching our Web page through research subject areas, such as physical chemistry and chemical physics, inorganic and materials chemistry, organic chemistry, biochemistry and bioinorganic chemistry, and theoretical chemistry. Many research groups in our department are involved in multidisciplinary activities through different research institutes and programs on campus, such as the Princeton Environmental Institute, the Program in Molecular Biophysics, the Genomics Institute, the Princeton Institute for the Science and Technology of Materials (PRISM), and the Princeton Optoelectronic Materials Center. There are also many collaborative research topics within our department. Our undergraduates often earn certificates in other fields, reflecting the diversity of our interests.

Chemistry is applicable as a foundation for many different activities after graduation. Many of our students go on to medical school or other related professional schools with a good grasp of the chemical foundations of biological processes. Others go on to graduate school in chemistry or other disciplines, such as materials science. Some go on to law school or business school, taking with them a technical background that serves them well. Others go into consulting. A good number do things unrelated to chemistry, having been chemistry majors just because they like the subject. Maybe it’s because chemistry majors know that the rest of the world thinks they’re nuts, or maybe it’s the experience of surviving junior laboratory together, but there’s a good camaraderie among our students, with lots of good social interaction and mutual support. You can see some of our current and former students, and read about what they have to say about being chemistry majors, on our Web page. We recommend that if you want to talk to someone informally about what it’s like to be a chemistry major, you come to the main office in Frick and talk to Kirsten Arentzen (kirsten@princeton.edu), our undergraduate administrator. Tell her your interests, plans, and uncertainties, and she will help you to decide whether chemistry is for you. Also, our director of undergraduate studies, Professor Michael Hecht (hecht@princeton.edu), will be happy to talk to you or otherwise help you to find a faculty member or student who will be able to answer your questions.