Chemists in the 1950s were furious too: 'press a button and structures came out'
layer07_yuxi · x · 2026-10-13
In a thread about mathematicians' reactions to AI (a fictional DeepSeek-solving-Riemann scenario), @layer07yuxi shares a piece of chemistry history: in the 1950s, when X-ray crystallography matured, some chemists were very upset that you could now "press a button and structures came out."
The attached excerpt from period literature warns that while X-ray methods could rapidly and precisely locate atoms, they "cannot enlighten him about the discoveries that might have been made during a detailed chemical analysis" — and organic chemistry might even be retarded by the practice. The analogy: today's pushback from mathematicians mirrors what other disciplines went through during earlier automation transitions.
Related event: Mathematicians' AI Anxiety Echoes 1950s Structural Chemistry Debate(3 posts)→
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