The Bitter Lesson of structural chemistry: mathematicians are reliving the 1950s debate
layer07_yuxi · x · 2026-10-13
layer07yuxi's essay "The Bitter Lesson of Structural Chemistry" points out that mathematicians are now running through the same argument structural chemists made in the 1950s. Citing historian Leo B. Slater: Robinson lamented in 1973 that machine-derived structures would impoverish chemistry—"we should probably know nothing about the isatins"—while Woodward championed instrumentation in 1963, saying new tools deliver in days what once took months or years. The piece reframes today's AI-vs-understanding debates in math as history repeating.
Related event: Mathematicians' AI Anxiety Echoes 1950s Structural Chemistry Debate(3 posts)→
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