Quantum Chemistry

Rating:
Summary: Good undergraduate text
Review: Donald McQuarrie presents the fundamental aspects of Quantum chemistry in an efficient logical manner. The text had excellent problems with solutions, and a readily comprehendable mathematical framework. Unfortunatly, the final chapter treatment of spectroscopy was somewhat inadequte.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Quantum Chemistry Text
Review: Donald McQuarrie presents the fundamental aspects of Quantum chemistry in an efficient logical manner. The text had excellent problems with solutions, and a readily comprehendable mathematical framework. Unfortunatly, the final chapter treatment of spectroscopy was somewhat inadequte.

Rating:
Summary: For beginners only
Review: I disagree with the above assertion that this book is suitable for a graduate course. This book is the strained peas of the electronic structure library and is unsuitable for anyone with experience in the field or basic math. Levine's book is a better place to start, but far too thorough on the math. McQuarrie is at best 'cute', and certainly not worth more than $40.

I personally think the ESQC Summer School course books are the best thing available for learning quantum chemistry. Ultimately, though, all roads in QC lead through Ostlund and Szabo. If you want to learn ab initio, get Ostlund and Szabo, then read Parr's book on DFT. That should get you up to speed.

Rating:
Summary: For beginners only
Review: I disagree with the above assertion that this book is suitable for a graduate course. This book is the strained peas of the electronic structure library and is unsuitable for anyone with experience in the field or basic math. Levine's book is a better place to start, but far too thorough on the math. McQuarrie is at best 'cute', and certainly not worth more than $40.

I personally think the ESQC Summer School course books are the best thing available for learning quantum chemistry. Ultimately, though, all roads in QC lead through Ostlund and Szabo. If you want to learn ab initio, get Ostlund and Szabo, the read Parr's book on DFT. That should get you up to speed.

Rating:
Summary: Rockin good fun...
Review: I'd say this book is an excellent book at both the graduate and undergraduate level. Contrary to one of the reviewers. It's very straightforward, and written with the less gifted 'physics' student in mind. It's not the only book you'll need, but it certainly helps understand all the rest of them.Meaning that derivations are crystal clear, and difficult math is actually worked out on almost every occasion. It's got really nice coverage of the basics, which leads up to the H atom, multielectron atoms and the variety of computational methods for use with them, and the same level of coverage with molecules. And there is a chapter on time dependent solutions, which I haven't yet read. It's even got pictures of studly physicists in it. I'd totally recommend this out of all the other quantum books I've encountered. Though you will need to supplement it with other books if you go deep into quantum. And there's some development of spin, but not the full deal. Angular momentum could have been treated a bit more thoroughly as well, for a graduate class. I think there is a snippet or two about bra-ket notation. But that's best learned from a nice quantum mechanics book really, none of the chemistry oriented books cover that aspect well, because it's really rooted more in the 'physics' interpretation of quantum. I'd also point out that the books I've seen that cover the theory exhaustively are pretty short on well worked out example problems, and are kind of hard to understand sometimes. Not the case with this book.

Anyways, I wouldn't have taken the time to write this if I didn't think it was money well spent. My advisor even likes it, and he got his PhD in Feynman diagrams.

Rating:
Summary: great but easy
Review: The best part of this book is that it is easy to understand. McQuarrie goes through every single math step and you are never too lost. Everybody I know who used this book liked this book. There is also a solution manual for ALL of the problems, I don't see it listed on Amazon. The only drawback of this book is that some of it is too easy: for instance it skips bra and ket notation entirely. So it's not really appropriate for physicists or theoretical chemists. I definitely recommend this book, and get the solution manual with it too if you can. END

Rating:
Summary: Good undergraduate text
Review: This easily read book goes over the basics of quantum chemistry. It is designed for the undergraduate, and it is not acceptable for any graduate student.

Rating:
Summary: "Friendly", well-written introductory undergraduate text.
Review: This was a great text - well-written and easy to understand. Dr. McQuarrie has written in such a manner as to introduce a good basis for study of quantum mechanics while "overlooking" some of the more tricky mathematics (often exactly what a chemistry undergrad. wants). This book demonstrates Dr. McQuarrie's prowess over such widely-used authors such as Ira N. Levine

Rating:
Summary: The abc of Quantum Chemistry
Review: Unlike Atkins, this text does not oversimplify things, and unlike Levine it doesn't make them heavy going. Rather this work is probably the best introduction to Quantum Chemistry that any undergraduate can ever have. The historical background of the discoveries, the eloquent description of the methods employed, the necessary justifications to help you understand the subject and the often annoying presence of Dirac's vector notation being ommited whenever possible all contributes to boost your interest in the subject. This is the perfect launch pad for the early classics such as Pauling's 'Introduction to Quantum Mechanics with Applications to Chemistry' or Murrell, Tedder and Kettle's 'Valence Theory'...