Master microscopist Walter McCrone describes his work in detecting forged paintings and authenticating lost works of master artists.
Most students of chemistry are unaware of opportunities and challenges in the flavors and fragrances industry. In fact, few of us realize how much the processed food we eat is "enhanced" by additives.
Lieb and Yngvason describe in this article how the concept of entropy can be explained without resorting to heat engines or statistical mechanics, and without even the a priori imposition of temperature.
These authors address a few of the same questions as do Karukstis and Van Hecke, but they take aim at a somewhat more technically sophisticated audience; instead of trying to enhance chemical education near the introductory level, they are speaking to practicing chemists, some of whom may also be teachers.
Kerry Karukstis and Gerry Van Hecke teach undergraduate chemistry at Harvey Mudd College (my alma mater), and Gerry was a student there at the same time I was (sometime in the previous millennium). They have collaborated on a very useful and engaging supplementary book for introductory and organic chemistry.
One of the mysteries of life is why organisms on our planet uses L-amino acids exclusively, when their mirror images have the same chemical stability.
The reach of analytical chemistry is amazing even to chemists! Joseph Lambert, a Professor of analytical chemistry at Northwestern University describes in this fascinating book how chemistry is used to study stone, glass, pottery, organic materials, metals, and human remains.
Seymour Benzer sounds like a biologist to whom I would enjoy talking about science. He came to his present research interests after a good start to a career in physics, and after avoiding biology courses at Brooklyn College because they were too much like natural history and with too little deductive science.
Jazz pianist Don Asher earned a baccalaureate degree in chemistry from Cornell University before finding a career in jazz and writing.
An excellent argument can be made, that G. N. Lewis is the most outstanding American scientist not to have won a Nobel Prize. In fact, the "American" adjective could be removed from that statement.
