book review

Alas, nouveau vibration theory fails to The Emperor’s new theory take the world by storm. Their interest piqued by his fragrance reviews, Turin is The Emperor of Scent: A Story of Perfume, approached by the “Big Boys”, the multina- tional companies that create and supply Obsession, and the Last Mystery of the Senses perfume for many of the world’s most famous brands. They offer him a tantaliz- by Chandler Burr ing sniff of their vast smell libraries, Random House, New York, 2002 $24.95 glimpses of proprietary databases, and invi- hardcover, pp 318 tations to posh parties. They flirt, but ulti- ISBN 0-375-50797-3 mately send him off, along with the theory he rode in on. To Burr, this proves that the Reviewed by Avery N. Gilbert Big Boys are threatened: they believe Turin’s theory is powerful enough to loosen their oligarchic grip on the market. At the same time, Turin is sandbagged I hear the sound of a gentle word ting it published. But this giddy and over- by the entrenched academic establishment. On the wind that lifts her perfume through wrought account by Chandler Burr is more His attempt to publish the theory in a lead- the air than a standard scientific biography; it’s ing British scientific journal is (gasp!) reject- I’m pickin’ up good vibrations part hagiography and part legal brief. ed. This deliberate refusal to acknowledge She’s giving me excitations Burr portrays Turin as a Goethe-like the brilliance of Turin’s paper is, according polymath, a brilliant, intellectually rest- to Burr, clear evidence of “scientific cor- —The Beach Boys, Good Vibrations, 1966 less, self-educated aesthete. He has a doc- ruption” and a “failure of the scientific http://www.nature.com/natureneuroscience Who knew that Brian Wilson and Mike torate in physiology but “picked up process”. When later, in a deliberate end- Love were olfactory theorists? The idea that chemistry on his own”, along with physics. run around peer reviewers, the paper is the sense of smell operates on the same He’s held appointments at research insti- published by editorial fiat in a specialty principle as hearing or vision—namely, tutes in France, Russia, the USA and Eng- journal, Burr detects no failure of scientific vibrations causing neural excitations—has land. Turin is a vivid conversationalist, process. In the end it doesn’t matter: Turin’s a long pedigree. In 1857, a perfumer capable of invoking the Situationists, Noël paper sinks without a ripple. named Septimus Piesse placed odors on a Coward and Wagner in an anecdote about Burr’s book is openly partisan, and his musical scale: camphor vibrated one octave why he disliked elementary school. We tone swerves unpleasantly between glibness above middle C. In 1919, Albert Heyninx learn that Turin is a sharp dresser and vain and rancor. When writing about the science, proposed that the nose identifies an odor about his appearance. He bores easily. His he adopts a self-consciously saccharine style. molecule by the selective absorption of favorite Sauternes is the 1981 Château Electrons are “extremely inquisitive crea- light specific to its intramolecular vibra- Lamothe Despujols. tures” that “smoosh” around subatomic tions. In 1937, Malcolm Dyson invoked Turin collects perfume and perfumery space. Isotopes are molecular variants akin

© Group 2003 Nature Publishing infrared spectroscopy and the Raman lore. In 1992, while between jobs, he pub- to Coke and Diet Coke. When describing Effect. R.H. Wright’s spin in the 1960s was lished Parfums: Le Guide, a collection of per- the reception of Turin’s theory, however, to correlate wave number with psy- fume reviews written in a hyper-lyrical Burr’s tone develops a hostile edge. Skeptical chophysical data, to no avail. mode. A typical example: “Après l’Ondée scientists are described as walking away in Vibration theory lay dormant for the evolves only slightly with time: its central disgust, hanging up on phone interviews, past three decades largely because it lacks white note, caressing and slightly venomous, and refusing to answer e-mails. Burr bor- a plausible biological mechanism for con- like the odor of a peach stone, imposes itself rows a tabloid tactic and offers their non- verting intramolecular vibrations into neu- immediately and retains its mystery forev- cooperation as proof of a jealous conspiracy ronal activation. Recently, however, it was er.” Turin’s acute olfactory sensibilities can against Turin. Science writing has hybridized resuscitated by a physiologist and perfume detect the heroic creativity lingering in the with ambush journalism. critic named Luca Turin. While implausi- sad dregs of an antique perfume bottle. He Humans have roughly 350 functional ble, Turin’s proposal is certainly a delight- frequently bemoans the loss of quality and olfactory receptor genes, yet we can dis- ful potpourri of creativity, conjecture, style in contemporary perfumes, as their criminate between thousands of different extrapolation, and isolated observations. manufacturers cheapen the ingredients and smells. How this multitude of receptor/lig- And it’s brazen: a universal theory of smell cater to modern mass-market tastes. For and relationships forms a sensory code for based on one man’s olfactory impressions. him, the oldies are golden. smell remains to be determined, but there is In a grand substitution of ego for psy- With similar nostalgia, Turin rejects a broad consensus that receptor binding chophysics, Turin claims that Turin’s the- the current, receptor-based, ‘lock and key’ depends on the shape of the odorant mole- ory successfully predicts odors because they view of olfaction in favor of vibration the- cule. Against this reality, Emperor of Scent smell the way Turin says they do. ory, a notion with Victorian provenance represents a triumphalist account of an The Emperor of Scent is the story of how and the patina of history. He dusts off unproven alternate theory. In ancient Turin arrived at his version of vibration the- Dyson’s paper, updates it with new Rome, the honor of a triumph was reserved ory, and his trials and tribulations in get- physics (inelastic electron tunneling), for an emperor who achieved a glorious adds some biology (olfactory receptors victory. Should Turin’s conjecture prove Avery Gilbert is at the Cranial One Corporation, as spectrometers with NADPH as an correct, he will of course deserve one. But Upper Montclair, New Jersey 07043, USA. embedded energy source) and voila! he until then, this appears to be a case of pre- e-mail: [email protected] has relaunched vibration theory. mature adulation.

nature neuroscience • volume 6 no 4 • april 2003 335