My thesis problem and my solution for it required my major professor to pass
it on to someone who knew more about the subject than he did. It wasn't Luibrand.
To solve the problem I used a trick learned by other chemical kineticists
called the method of Gould and what was for the time the most sophisticated hand
held calculator of the time, 1974, a HP-97 or HP-98 and several days of punching
numbers into it.
This led to an inspiration as to the nature of the molecular events in the reaction pot.
A mechanism was developed. From the mechanism a set of differential equations were
written and solved.
I gained access to a WANG 720-C in the UCD Botany Department and wrote a 1200 line
program in assembler to process the physical data from the kinbetic experiment.
All the symbols of the language were written on the faces of the keys on the keypad
which was about the size of a large typewriter. Tape drive for data storage.