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'There Is No God': An Interview with Peter Atkins
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21511 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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5 / 2001 |
3,294 Words |
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Interview With Peter Atkins
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A physical chemist, author, Oxford don, and atheist, Peter Atkins finds not one jot of evidence for any creator, purpose, or cosmic benevolence. An Interview with Peter Atkins
Peter Atkins, the SmithKline Beecham Fellow and Tutor in Physical Chemisty at Oxford University, was born in 1940. He studied chemistry at the University of Leicester, earning his Ph.D. in 1964 with research that combined theory and experiment in the general field of electron-spin resonance. Subsequently his Harkness Fellowship of the Commonwealth Fund provided not only a fellowship at the University of California, Los Angeles, but also support for required extensive touring in the United States, through which Atkins came to know and admire the country and its people. Thus broadened in his perspective and with his great interest in theory confirmed, he returned in 1965 to England, where he took up theory full time at Oxford as a university lecturer in physical chemistry and fellow and tutor of Lincoln College. He has been there ever since. His research was on theoretical aspects of magnetic resonance, the effect of magnetic fields on chemical reactions, and the electromagnetic properties of molecules. He lectures in quantum theory and thermodynamics.
As time went by, Atkins increasingly turned to writing, in part to encourage young minds to think for themselves and fall in love with science. He has written about 40 books, most of them textbooks, such as his widely used Physical Chemistry, Inorganic Chemistry, and introductory chemistry texts such as Chemical Principles and Molecules, Matter, and Change. He has also written higher-level books, such as Molecular Quantum Mechanics. He has reached out to the general public with volumes
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