Abstract

Mathematical chemistry entailing the development of novel mathematics for chemical applications is argued to exist, and to manifest an extremely diverse range of applications. Yet further it is argued to have a substantial history of well over a century, though the field has perhaps only attained a degree of recognition with a formal widely accepted naming in the last few decades. The evidence here for the broad range and long history is by way of numerous briefly noted example sub-areas. That mathematical chemistry was only recently formally recognized is seemingly the result of its having been somewhat disguised for a period of time – sometimes because it was viewed as just an unnamed part of physical chemistry, and sometimes because the rather frequent applications in other chemical areas were not always viewed as mathematical (often involving somewhat ‘non-numerical’ mathematics). Mathematical chemistry’s relation to and distinction from computational chemistry and theoretical chemistry is further briefly addressed