chemistry

Harry Wiener

Harry Wiener is a chemistry topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Harry Wiener rather than just read about it. In short: Harry Wiener (October 29, 1924 in Vienna, Austria – November 8, 1998 in New York City, US) was an Austrian-American chemist, physician and psychologist, a pioneer in cheminformatics and chemical graph theory, and a long-time employee at Pfizer. Education and career Wiener was born in Vienna in 1924 to Jewish parents Joseph Wiener and Beile Wiener.

Key takeaways

Harry Wiener belongs to chemistry; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Harry Wiener to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Harry Wiener from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Harry Wiener (October 29, 1924 in Vienna, Austria – November 8, 1998 in New York City, US) was an Austrian-American chemist, physician and psychologist, a pioneer in cheminformatics and chemical graph theory, and a long-time employee at Pfizer.

Education and career Wiener was born in Vienna in 1924 to Jewish parents Joseph Wiener and Beile Wiener. His family emigrated to New York City, US, in 1941 by way of France and Portugal. Wiener attended Brooklyn College and received a BS in chemistry in 1945. Wiener attended Long Island College of Medicine and obtained an MD in 1949. Wiener was appointed to the management team at Pfizer in 1958 and remained at the company until 1995, when he retired.

Achievements Wiener made important and fundamental contributions to the study of topological indices and established a correlation between the Wiener index and boiling points (hence viscosity and surface tension) of the paraffins. He laid the foundation of chemical graph theory, and built a bridge between group theory, graph theory, and chemistry. The Wiener index and its generalization, the Hyper-Wiener index, have been used in predicting antibacterial activity in drugs to modeling crystalline phenomena. The Wiener index plays an important role in sociometry and the theory of social networks which was developed by Christophe Soulé et al., as well as Gromov hyperbolicity Parameters. The Wiener index also plays an important role in Nanotechnology.

Personal life Wiener married Charlotte Baran, a coworker at Pfizer, in 1982.

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Harry Wiener

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Harry Wiener claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In chemistry, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Harry Wiener before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Harry Wiener ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Harry Wiener

In research: Harry Wiener appears in chemistry research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Harry Wiener in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Harry Wiener is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1924 births, 1998 deaths, 20th-century American chemists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Harry Wiener outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Harry Wiener in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Harry Wiener means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Harry Wiener out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Harry Wiener in simple terms?

Why does Harry Wiener matter?

Because it connects several chemistry ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Harry Wiener?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Harry Wiener.