book reviews drug-resistant tuberculosis, has written such a first-hand account, The Tuberculosis Sur- vival Handbook (XLR8 Graphics, London, 1999). It is a slender but revelatory volume whose jokey title does it no justice; it should be read by anyone involved with this still terrible disease. ■ Thomas Dormandy is at 16 St Albans Road, London NW5 1RD, UK. Reactions of a chemical kindred Candid Science: Conversations with Famous Chemists edited by István Hargittai Imperial College Press: 2000. 516 pp. £25 (pbk) Gautam R. Desiraju Science, one would like to think, is always candid, and here we have a collection of A cornucopia of candid scientists who speak at length about chemists: words from themselves and their work. Just about every Pauling through one of the 40-odd chemists interviewed by to Zewail. István Hargittai could be termed famous, at least within the chemical community. outsider. This brings one to the next question chemical reactions. Hoffmann would clearly Around half are Nobel laureates, and the — does the outsider have in-built advantages like to convey a broader message to society editor has chosen well in that, taken together, as a researcher? According to Erwin through his poems, films and general writ- the conversations provide a broad overview Chargaff, each pioneer is eo ipso an outsider. ing, but recognizes his limitations when he of the development of chemical thought in Going by the interviews here, one can safely concedes that, in the United States, scientists the second half of the last century. turn the aphorism around. and their achievements are generally The interviews have appeared individu- Indeed, a significant theme of this book is ignored. ally in The Chemical Intelligencer, a journal what it takes to make an outsider into a pio- Fukui, in contrast, is uncomfortable which itself owes much to Hargittai as its neer. Gertrude Elion, Paul Scheuer, Vladimir about communicating with the lay public on founding chief editor. The present book is a Prelog, Michael Dewar, Roald Hoffmann, scientific matters, but is inundated with lightly edited collection of this material. The Herbert Brown, George Olah, Eiji Osawa requests to do so. Is his austerity, quite typi- interviews are not published in any particu- and Ahmed Zewail have much to say on this cal of Asian cultures, a result of society’s lar sequence, but, having read them individ- matter, in addition to Chargaff and Djerassi. admiration or does it actually accentuate it? ually in The Chemical Intelligencer, I must These chemists come across clearly as out- Again, is Hoffmann’s obvious enthusiasm a admit to a feeling of satisfaction in seeing siders with respect either to the establish- response to the general lack of interest in them all together. The whole is greater than ment, to their adopted country, to society science among the American public, or does the sum of its parts. and its conventions, or more poignantly, a proactive stance, quite common in the A third or so of those interviewed are with respect to their families. But in every West, induce the general apathy? The truth native-born Americans, another third are case, self-perception as an outsider seems probably lies somewhere in between, but it scientists of European extraction, mainly to have triggered vital chemical reflexes. Can would still be interesting to record the reac- Jewish, who migrated to the United States internal unrest spark scientific imagination? tions of Nobel laureates from the United around the tumultuous times of the Second Clearly, yes, although other equally stimulat- States and Europe to the near-hysterical adu- World War, while the remaining inter- ing reasons are apparent from the conversa- lation they receive in Asian settings, almost viewees spent a large part of their working tions with, say, John Pople, John Roberts, as a matter of course. lives in the countries of their birth, whether Stephen Berry and Kenneth Pitzer. In the Another theme that emerges is that the in Europe or elsewhere. end, though, all major scientific progress most successful chemists appear to be able to The American influence is pervasive in arises from “gap jumping”, to quote Derek change their research interests effortlessly, in this book, as it is in modern chemistry. Barton. To do this, however, one must recog- some cases many times over, during their Although the editor does not mention the nize the gap and then want to jump. Pioneers careers. Sherwood Rowland refers to the circumstances that led to his choice of do both. yawning gap between being “in the groove” these particular chemists, the very complete Science is dispassionate in its aims and and “in the rut”. Philip Eaton, who synthe- picture that emerges only highlights the international in its scope, and yet the activity sized cubane in the 1960s using a stepwise dominance of the US academic–industrial of scientists is strongly influenced, even lim- route, is sure that synthesizing the similar synergism in establishing trends and setting ited, by society. Take, for instance, Roald but far more complex buckminsterfullerene priorities in contemporary chemical re- Hoffmann and Kenichi Fukui. These using a similar approach today would be a search. Carl Djerassi comments about the chemists shared the 1981 Nobel Prize in waste of time. Fukui switched completely fashion orientation of American chemistry, Chemistry for their theories, developed from experiment to theory. but is quick to admit that he speaks as an independently, concerning the course of Many of those interviewed also seem to © 2000 Macmillan Magazines Ltd 996 NATURE | VOL 405 | 29 JUNE 2000 | www.nature.com book reviews be concerned with the general shortcomings Any attempt to come to terms with the of the chemical community. Olah feels that spaces of scientific endeavour is plainly a chemists just don’t think about the broader Putting science multi-faceted project. And the essays in this picture; he also admits that they are not the collection focus on one key aspect of the task: most interesting of people — surely, there is a in its place the connections between science and archi- connection. Hoffmann states blandly that The Architecture of Science tecture. The entire volume is concerned any piece of junk can be published some- edited by Peter Galison & Emily Thompson with elucidating the relationships between where, and that even in the Journal of the MIT Press: 1999. 576 pp. $65, £43.50 the buildings of science and the building of American Chemical Society, the acceptance David N. Livingstone scientific knowledge. rate is around 60% for full papers. These and Temporally, these essays, by academics many other comments need to be read care- Scientific knowledge is made in many differ- and practitioners, take us from early modern fully and assimilated, especially by newcom- ent places; does it really matter where? To put European museums and chemical houses ers to the subject. it another way, can the location of scientific to twentieth-century molecular biology lab- With the rapidly changing research scene, endeavour affect the conduct of science and, oratories and the post-modern hospital. one is almost wistful about the past — when even more importantly, its content? The con- Conceptually the range is just as great, deal- Djerassi exalts Robert Woodward and tributors to the present collection evidently ing with the ways in which the arrangement Robert Robinson as generalists, when one think that the answer to these questions is an of scientific space has managed the tricky compares Elion’s gentle and thoughtful emphatic ‘yes’. relationships between secrecy and openness, approach to drug design with today’s high- On the surface at least, this is a remark- concealment and display; with the role archi- throughput screening procedures, when ably counter-intuitive claim. Of all the tecture plays in shaping individual and one savours the complete picture of marine human projects devoted to laying aside prej- group identity; and with the prevalence of natural products obtained from Scheuer’s udices, and to putting in place mechanisms physiological and mechanical metaphors work, and when Hoffmann laments the lack to guarantee objectivity, has science not been (such as circulation and compression) in of teaching content in a research paper, one the most assiduous in executing its ideals? architectural thought. More specifically, the feels that perhaps the golden age of classical And yet science has been practised at a links between scientists and architects in the chemistry is over. vast array of sites, each with different physi- construction of the Lewis Thomas Labora- Research is and will always be exciting, cal, acoustic and olfactory qualities: the tory for Molecular Biology at Princeton is the but the conversations in this book encapsu- alchemist’s workshop with its roaring fur- subject of several chapters. late a time that is past, and leave the reader nace and smelly, noisy stills; the wide-open, Like most multi-authored works, this with a comforting glow. The main protag- airy spaces of the field; the fusty alcoves of the book lacks a single, coherent line of argu- onists have told their tales, and the editor has museum; the antiseptic hospital. Even to ment. Some of the essays consist of the conducted his interviews with sympathy and express things in this way, of course, is to run autobiographical reflections of individuals collected his material with care. For this, he is the risk of caricature. Laboratories, gardens, directly involved in particular building to be commended. His book will be enjoyed observatories, hospitals and so on all come in projects; others are normative arguments by chemists and non-chemists alike. ■ a wide variety of sizes and configurations. about the kind of relations that should Gautam R. Desiraju is in the School of Chemistry, But these stereotypes can convey something obtain between science and architecture; University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad 500 046, of the remarkable array of knowledge- others are historical interrogations of how India.