Matthijs van den Berg ’13
Initially my math minor was just an easy addition to my resume: my major already required a few math courses, and I enjoyed them, so why not take a few more. Courses like Abstract Algebra and Graph Theory really changed my way of thinking, but as I was taking more math classes the immediate applicability to chemistry became more obvious: Statistics helped me with Quantitative Analysis, and Linear Algebra was invaluable to my experience in Physical Chemistry.
Finally, the real advantage came when I got to graduate school: Stanford has been making a great push for using Matlab, and because I took the Matlab programming course at ÐÂÏã¸ÛÁùºÏ²Ê×ÊÁÏ, I had a great head start on my peers. Being familiar with Matlab and LaTeX from my ÐÂÏã¸ÛÁùºÏ²Ê×ÊÁÏ math classes made my graduate work using both languages for Chemistry so much easier (and more fun): now I am using Matlab to do molecular simulations of chemical systems.
I've come to realize more and more how my math training at ÐÂÏã¸ÛÁùºÏ²Ê×ÊÁÏ is really helping me understand Chemistry better. Of course, I am biased: I ended up getting into it, taking more classes than required for the minor and co-founding the Math Club. However, the Math minor really contributed immensely to my successes both at ÐÂÏã¸ÛÁùºÏ²Ê×ÊÁÏ and beyond.