Chasing the molecule
John Buckingham
Stroud: Sutton 2004 | Pp259 | £20.00 | ISBN0 750 93345 3
Reviewed by John Nicholson

During my stint as secretary of the Royal Society of Chemistry Historical Chemistry Group I learnt that there are two kinds of histories of chemistry: the historians' and the retired chemists'. The latter group is interested in what is internally important to chemistry and tend to judge events with a modern eye. This book, in my opinion, is unquestionably a 'retired chemist's history'.

Written in a generally elegant style, Chasing the molecule takes us, in just over 200 pages, from the alchemists to the modern pharmaceutical industry. The chapters reveal the characters and preoccupations of the key figures who have developed our understanding of the massive edifice of modern chemistry.

The book has a distinctly Whiggish flavour - ie the view that things are getting better. This is probably inevitable in any writing on the history of science because the evidence clearly supports this view, but I think that Buckingham carries it too far. He is critical of Berzelius, for example, for holding too strong a commitment to an electrical view of chemical bonding, but no real attempt is made to understand Berzelius' position nor why he felt constrained to comment as he did.

Despite these reservations, I enjoyed this book, and would recommend it to teachers and students of chemistry who want to know how we got where we are today. Although not for the professional scholar of the history of chemistry, the book's perspective does convey one important truth: that modern chemistry is a towering intellectual achievement, and one of which mankind should be proud.