The Oxygen Apocalypse: how symmetry saves us from the flames
📖 20 min read • Cyanobacteria captured light to break a quantum law, unpicking the electron pair, and extinguished ancient life in the process
Keiran Rowell
Personal website of Keiran Rowell - Computational science: chemistry, molecular biology, educator, and scientific computing specialist. Sharing research, teaching materials, and insights on computational chemistry. Obsessive explorations into the oddities of chemistry, history, music, and scientific computing... on occasion.
Latest posts
Blue Fire and Yellow Brimstone: the world’s waning appetite for hellish sulfur
📖 15 min read • Life and death from Satan's gold
From Muck to Mauve: the creation of modern dyes from coal tar
📖 40 min read • Aniline and the birth of the German chemical industry
Nitrogen fixation: artificial lightning, bird poop, and how kudzu grew out of control
📖 15 min read • How breaking the N₂ bond unleashed unstoppable growth
The chemistry behind bioluminescence
📖 10 min read • How breaking an oxygen pair bond generates light
An Ersatz Ansatz
📖 15 min read • Computational chemistry methods for beginners
Selecting an active space
📖 10 min read • Input examples for Gaussian multiconfigurational conical intersection searches