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Sir Christopher Ingold-A Major Prophet of Organic Chemistry Kenneth T. Leffek. Nova Lion: Victoria, BC, Canada, 1996. x + 262 pp. ISBN 0-9680674-0-9. $19.50.
In recent years, many more biographies of chemists seem to have been published than ever before. One reason, of course, may be that there are many more chemists and, in fact, it is possible that there are actually fewer biographies published per capita in the chemical world. The character of those I have read in recent years is quite variable. For example, recent biographies of Linus Pauling are somewhat derivative, in the "gotcha" style of modern journalism; in contrast, the books in the ACS autobiographical Profiles series are, for the most part, rather specialized reviews of the individual's chemical contributions, usually made more generally interesting by numerous photographs of the individual, his family, and colleagues.
The Leffek biography of Sir Christopher Ingold is quite different. While clearly written with reverence for its subject, it is a remarkably thorough account of the life of a very important figure in what I prefer to call "organophysical" chemistry. What I mean by this term is the application of physical methods to organic chemistry, as opposed to...