Skip to main content

Solving Chemistry - Bernard Bulkin ***

This is an odd one - it's a memoir highlighting the chemistry in the career of Bernard Bulkin, who has been a significant figure in both academic and industrial chemistry (the latter primarily at BP). It's interesting that Bulkin does not really define what chemistry is - something we rarely attempt to do (the Royal Society of Chemistry's website doesn't say what it is either). Instead, Bulkin places chemistry with respect to the other sciences, filling the gap between physics and biology.

By far the most fascinating content here is Bulkin's assertion that chemistry is finished - that unlike any other significant field of science, it's pretty much complete in the academic sense. There are plenty of new applications to be worked out - but the fundamentals are pretty much there: perhaps this isn't a great time to be a theoretical chemist (as opposed to an applied one), though Bulkin certainly gives the impression that he enjoyed his time in academia (even if, to be honest, he seems to have enjoyed business more).

There is also interesting material on what it means to be a scientist - the fundamentals a scientist should have (but that aren't necessarily taught) and on Bulkin's experience in business. However, there are two significant problems with the rest of the content. Although this isn't in any sense a personal memoir (we learn hardly anything of Bulkin's private life), it is framed as a scientific memoir - and the memoir form really only works with someone famous, someone who has gone through a dramatic life experience or someone who is a brilliant writer - and none of these applies. There's one section where we're introduced to Bob and Stan and Jim and Mary and Henry and Laura in just two paragraphs, and I found it hard to care.

The other troublesome area is that there is far too much technical material on the chemistry and methodology Bulkin was involved with during his academic phase, which, I'm afraid, only a chemist could love. Although (having done chemistry for two years at undergraduate level) there were some aspects I enjoyed in a reminiscent sense, I found it hard to become engaged.

Just occasionally a bright spark of interest comes through - for example when Bulkin discusses the mechanism by which bread becomes stale, and cookies can be made with crispy outsides and soft insides (the same chemical basis), but there wasn't enough of this kind of content.

For a limited audience, then, this is a fascinating read (and I will be passing the book on to my chemist brother-in-law, who I think will be particularly interested in this 'chemistry is finished' thesis), but it doesn't have the right approach to keep the attention of a general audience throughout.

Paperback:  

Kindle:  
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
Review by Brian Clegg
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire - Henry Gee ****

In his last book, Henry Gee impressed with his A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth - this time he zooms in on one very specific aspect of life on Earth - humans - and gives us not just a history, but a prediction of the future - our extinction. The book starts with an entertaining prologue, to an extent bemoaning our obsession with dinosaurs, a story that leads, inexorably towards extinction. This is a fate, Gee points out, that will occur for every species, including our own. We then cover three potential stages of the rise and fall of humanity (the book's title is purposely modelled on Gibbon) - Rise, Fall and Escape. Gee's speciality is palaeontology and in the first section he takes us back to explore as much as we can know from the extremely patchy fossil record of the origins of the human family, the genus Homo and the eventual dominance of Homo sapiens , pushing out any remaining members of other closely related species. As we move onto the Fall section, Gee gives ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Autobiography – Charles Darwin ****

I have to confess to putting off reading this book until the last moment, as I expected it to be a typical piece of Victorian sentimental unreadable stodge. I was wrong. Darwin’s little book (only 150 small pages with appendices) was originally written for his own children, and displays a very personal style of writing – though, as son Francis comments, his style was always more populist than was common then: “In writing he sometimes showed the same strong tendency to strong expressions that he did in conversation. Thus in the Origin, p440, there is a description of a larvel [sic] cirripede ‘with six pairs of beautifully constructed natatory legs, a pair of magnificent compound eyes and extremely complex antennae’. We used to laugh at him for this sentence, which we compared to an advertisement.” The main book is delightful because it demonstrates Darwin’s self-depreciating modesty, and the fascinating path he took from enthusiastic shooter of game, to amateur geologist (still his...
Post a Comment
Read more

Zero Degrees of Empathy [The Science of Evil] – Simon Baron-Cohen ***

I’ve been a real fan of previous books by Simon Baron-Cohen like  The Essential Difference , so opening this was one was a pleasant prospect. What I found was a book that wasn’t  bad … but that could have been a lot better. I got the impression of a book that had been rushed out without a lot of work going into it. The thesis at the heart of the book – that one of the important ‘circuits’ of the brain is the one dealing with empathy, and that individuals sit on an empathy spectrum, with some residing at zero degrees of empathy – is an interesting one. Baron-Cohen introduces us to three key personality types he defines as ‘zero-negative’ including psychopaths, plus types that are ‘zero-positive’ like those with Asperger’s. In a way both of these definitions are odd, in that his zero-negatives can actually have a lot of the kind of empathy that involves being able to read another person’s emotional state, and his zero-negatives can have a lot of the kind of empathy i...
Post a Comment
Read more