Over the course of the past century and a half, physics, chemistry, and mathematics have evolved into interdependent but separate intellectual disciplines. This development is reflected in the departmental structure of the School of Physical Sciences. In the same period, these fundamental disciplines have moved into domains of abstraction unimagined by early scientists. 

This trend to abstraction with its concomitant increase in understanding of the physical universe provides the major challenge to the student of the physical sciences. Mathematics, physics, and chemistry, while providing the foundation of the technology that dominates contemporary civilization, underlie to an ever-increasing extent the new developments in the biological and social sciences. Earth system science is grounded in the traditional physical sciences while breaking new paths in the quantitative study of changes in the global environment.

The Earth, as a coupled system of atmosphere, ocean, land, and cryosphere, has changed in our lifetime. The observed depletion of stratospheric ozone at high latitudes has been attributed directly to industrial use of halocarbons. Global warming is likely to result from increases in the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane, which are released by the use of fossil fuel and agricultural practices. Understanding the sensitivity of the Earth’s climate system requires a broad base of scientific knowledge, which includes detection, quantification, and prediction of the rates of change of chemical, physics.