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 UNE, I had a great head start on my peers. Being familiar with Matlab and LaTeX from my UNE 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 UNE 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 UNE and beyond.