physicist richard feynman said that if in some cataclysm all scientific knowledge were destroyed and only one sentence was passed on to the next generation, the statement that would contain the most information in the fewest words would be “all things they are made of atoms.” I guess this is the heart of chemistry, or almost what else do we need to know about chemistry?
feynman’s advice reminds me of isaac asimov’s story, ‘nightfall,’ where the stars only appear once every few millennia, the sight drives everyone crazy, the world burns, and science must start anew while scientists they try to preserve enough information. to start the process the next cycle! chemists certainly see the elements, the atoms, as the building blocks of the universe. we are interested in the structure of matter, which atoms make up a molecule or other more complex material, and how they are connected to each other. we come up with new methods to see inside matter.
You are reading: Best books on chemistry
“There are billions more atoms in a teaspoon of water than there are stars in the Milky Way.”
Because the function of a molecule depends on its structure, it is essential to understand what a chemical will do. we are also interested in how one molecule turns into another and how we can control that transformation to create new molecules. to do that, we work on an incredibly small scale. atoms are tiny. There are billions more atoms in a teaspoon of water than there are stars in the Milky Way. but i would dismiss feynman and say that chemists are interested in discovering the patterns in these transformations of matter, and that awareness of the reproducibility of chemical reactions arose long before we knew about atoms, and opened the door to many key discoveries. . the first chemists were brewers, dyers, painters, and cooks.
Your research isn’t much like brewing or cooking. Can you tell us something about what you study and what you love about your job?
You’re absolutely right, I don’t work in the classic chemistry lab with flasks and bubbling beakers; instead, I grab a cup of tea and log into a supercomputer, or find a whiteboard close at hand. I am a quantum chemist who develops and uses theoretical methods to understand the structure of molecules: the locations of atoms in space and, more importantly, why certain molecular structures arise. one of the main principles of chemistry is that molecular structure determines molecular behavior, so understanding the structure of a molecule is key to understanding the function of a molecule.
The molecules that interest me most are the ones that misbehave, or rather, the ones that have structures that chemists think they shouldn’t. Molecules, of course, don’t know the rules chemists think they should follow, so these structures offer clues to new paradigms. I love the moment when I can figure out what the molecule is doing and suggest new ways for chemists to think about molecular structure. Right now, my research group and I are exploring molecules that have strange topological properties, like möbius strips, and as a result have unexpected structures. From here, we hope to give chemists synthesizing molecules in the laboratory some ideas about new classes of structures with interesting properties.
It seems that simple curiosity plays an important role in your research, but surely you and your sponsors are also interested in its possible applications.
Curiosity and delight definitely play a role in my choice of interesting research problems. But working on these kinds of problems also drives the other part of my research, which is developing mathematical and computational methods to help chemists figure out what’s going on below the surface. The methods I have developed are now part of the standard set of tools quantum chemists have for testing molecules and have been applied to a wide variety of practical problems, including helping to design new drugs to control blood pressure and understanding how taxol , a powerful cancer drug, works.
How do you assess the importance of the work that won the 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry?
first of all, i must say that the work of smith, winter and arnold is far outside my own field. I’m not a biochemist that being said, my biochemistry colleagues were very excited to see more recognition for this strategy for making proteins that can make molecules “on demand”, and the practical possibilities are truly endless. i will also say that having written an essay, ‘sex in the citadel of science’ on why it might be that, even as the number of women in chemistry was growing, women were winning fewer and fewer nobel prizes in chemistry, i was delighted to see frances arnold win. And it was great to see Donna Strickland, whose work is probably closer to my field than this year’s chemistry laureates, among this year’s physics prize winners.
Let’s move on to your first choice of book. Tell us about Philip Ball’s H2O: A Biography of Water.
A few years ago, I attended a workshop at the Vatican observatory on water in the solar system and began to wonder exactly how old the water in my teacup was. was it here because of the formation of the earth, or did it crash into a sheer ball of dust some time later? I wrote “A Brief History of Water in the Universe” for Nature Chemistry, and in doing the research for that, I found Philip Ball’s biography of water.
A few years ago, I assigned the molecular world ball design to my introductory chemistry course alongside the more usual thousand-page textbook, in part because I wanted them to appreciate the beauty and excitement of chemical investigation . h2o did not disappoint. ball talks about difficult scientific topics in an accurate and truly accessible way.
“the book has something deeper to say about the line between science and pseudoscience that we would all do well to heed in this age of “fake news””
Water is such an iconic and ubiquitous molecule. it is in the clouds and the oceans; it runs through our veins and is tucked into the inner spaces of our cellular machinery. ball tells his story with sharp science and thought-provoking imagery. An image that has really stuck with me is that we should not think of clouds as discrete entities, like cotton balls floating on land, but rather see them as processes, like waterfalls, in constant flux. the chapter on strange water not only runs through the strangest stories (and fictions) about water, but has something deeper to say about the line between science and pseudoscience that we’d all do well to heed in this age of “news false”.
Your second choice is Barbara Goldsmith’s Obsessive Genius: The Inner World of Marie Curie. one reviewer wrote that one of the book’s strengths is its suppression of anger. do you agree? what are some of your other strengths?
i don’t know if i agree that goldsmith suppresses all the anger a 21st century feminist might feel at the way the broader scientific community treated marie curie. Describing the maneuvering around Curie’s Nobel Prize, for example, Goldsmith notes that “a vicious sexism killed any pretense that Marie Curie could be accepted as an equal,” and proceeds to detail with cold clarity all the ways in which curie contributions were diminished. Goldsmith is not describing casual cultural sexism, but rather a determined attempt to present Marie as an assistant and muse, rather than a scientist in her own right, by those with direct evidence to the contrary.
I read Eve Curie’s biography of her mother when I was an impressionable nine-year-old, which left me with a romanticized view of her genius and a deep desire to become a scientist, like Marie. For me, the strength of Marie Curie’s biography of Goldsmith is how it so clearly characterizes the depth of her obsession with her academic work in the face of almost unimaginable hardships, from her struggles to pay for her education in Paris to the loss of her beloved Pierre. Perhaps the book’s greatest strength is that Goldsmith does not overlook Curie’s struggles with debilitating depression, an episode that prevented him from going to Stockholm to receive her first Nobel Prize and which occurred at intervals throughout Curie’s life. she. nor does it minimize Curie’s blatant disregard for the dangers of working with radioactive materials. I’m still inspired by Curie, but now as much because of her persistence through her mental illness as because of her discoveries.
Your third option is Sam Kean’s Disappearing Spoon. please give us an idea why you like this book…and explain the title!
sam kean brings the periodic table to life with the stories you didn’t hear in high school chemistry but wish you had. kean explains why tin screams when you bend it and what that has to do with robert scott’s disastrous trip to the south pole (spoiler, it’s a phase change, like melting ice) and how cesium is used as a clock atomic. each page is an adventure that shows the variety of properties and behaviors of the elements. I’ve been a chemist for forty years, and this book really captures what I love about chemistry, both its surprises and its predictability. Along the way, Kean hints at the mysteries of the periodic table, where it came from and how it’s organized.
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As for the title, if you make a spoon with pure gallium, it looks and feels like a stainless steel spoon, but if you use it to stir tea, it will seem to vanish before your eyes. It’s literally melting, the melting point of gallium is only 86°F (30°C), and if you pour the tea out, you’ll find a pool of silvery liquid gallium at the bottom. there’s a cool video of that online! Sam Kean uses the story of the disappearing spoon to launch the story of the bitter showdown between Dmitri Mendeleev, who is credited with developing the periodic table, and Paul Lacoq de Boisbaudran, who discovered gallium.
With your fourth option, Deborah Blum’s Poisoner’s Manual, we’re in true crime territory. why do you recommend this book?
I love mysteries, particularly ones that revolve around the details of physical evidence. deborah blum’s book reminds me that molecules are powerful witnesses, if only we have the skills to interrogate them, and sometimes they are killers. The Poisoner’s Handbook is organized around the careers of Charles Norris, a New York City pathologist and medical examiner in the early 20th century, and Alexander Gettler, a chemist with a background in toxicology, but the molecules and methods that they use norris and gettler to detect them are the main characters.
the stories are raw and blum does not skimp on gory details. cyanide poisoning stories are not for the faint of heart or the faint of heart. my favorite cartoons are the ones where the chemistry doesn’t convict the obvious suspect. Frank Travia, accused in late 1926 of killing her girlfriend and then dismembering her body to dispose of him, insisted that she had woken up from her to find her dead on the floor. The case went to trial, but Norris and Gettler were able to prove that the real culprit was carbon monoxide from Travia’s stove. As Blum puts it so vividly, “Carbon monoxide is kind of a chemical bully. it suffocates its victims simply by taking oxygen out of the way.”
“carbon monoxide is kind of a chemical bully. it suffocates its victims simply by taking oxygen out of the way.”
blum’s latest story is the most captivating. imagine a tasteless, odorless poison that dissolves easily in coffee or tea, kills its victims with less than a third of an ounce, and, unlike carbon monoxide or cyanide poisoning, leaves no obvious evidence at autopsy. could a thallium-using poisoner get away with it? no, blum reassures us: the key is in the name of the element. William Crookes discovered thallium when he observed a bright spring green color in a flame test of contaminated sulfuric acid. gettler would burn samples of the victim’s tissues and look for that characteristic green. The incident Blum relates that horrified me the most was not a murder at all. Crookes apparently ingested thallium in an attempt to prove to his rival for discovery, Claude-August Lamy, that it was safe, at least in low doses, and thus discredit Lamy.
your final choice is why does asparagus make your urine smell bad? by andy brunning. why and what else does brunning tell us?
For starters, Andy Brunning points out that not everyone does it, only people who can break down asparagus acid, a chemical found only in asparagus, will notice the effect. The products of that breakdown are simple sulfur molecules, including methyl mercaptan, the same compound that’s added to natural gas to give it an odor that alerts people to leaks. sulfur compounds are notoriously foul-smelling. even in incredibly small amounts, humans can detect their odors at the parts per billion level, so it doesn’t take a lot of asparagus to be able to detect these compounds in urine.
Brunning’s focus on molecular structure throughout this book is very much in tune with my own research on molecular shape and behavior. brunning takes us on a molecular tour of what we eat and drink, analyzing the structures of molecules and their reactions to explain why bacon tastes so good and brussels sprouts so bad, at least for those who are genetically predisposed to try the bitter thiocyanates in the latter. he uses bold graphics to show what molecules look like, giving us a glimpse of how chemists see the world. There’s an easily digestible chemistry lesson in each panel, from what techniques are used to identify those smelly molecules in urine (gas chromatography) to the quantum mechanics behind why a gin and tonic will glow under a black light (quinine in the tonic).
This book reminds us that human beings are little chemical factories, taking raw materials, turning them into energy and building materials, and producing waste, some of it smellier or more colorful than others. (What beets can do to your urine is amazing.) But brunning also reminds us that we use molecules for pleasure, from the way the menthol in mint binds to “fresh” receptors in the mouth, making us think we’re eating something cold, to the strong bitterness of phenylindanes that give an extra touch to a mid-afternoon espresso.
if you want more of this simple explanation of chemistry that we find in everyday life, brunning has a fabulous and growing collection of these graphical explainers on his website, compound interest. is one of my favorite places to send to friends and family who ask about chemistry in the news.
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