No comments about Reaction Mechanisms of Inorganic and Organometallic Systems (Topics in Inorganic Chemistry).

No comments about Chemical Structure and Reactivity: An Integrated Approach.

No comments about NMR Spectroscopy in Inorganic Chemistry (Oxford Chemistry Primers).

No comments about Organometallics 2: Complexes with Transition Metal-Carbon p-bonds (Oxford Chemistry Primers, No 13).

No comments about Magnetism and Transition Metal Complexes (Dover Books on Chemistry).

1 comments about Molecular Modeling: Basic Principles and Applications.

1. This book describes what is essentially docking calculations in the context of the Accerlys software. The text is very qualitative and does not provide enough instruction to do any "molecular modeling". It seems to be more guidlines for various software packages sold by Accerlys.

2 comments about Symmetry and Structure: Readable Group Theory for Chemists.

1. In this text, Dr. Kettle presents the most lucent introduction available for students wishing to attain an understanding of Group Theory for chemical applications. The text is not overly mathematical in its presentation, setting it apart from the numerous other texts available on this subject. After having read this text, a student is amply able to understand discussions of group theory with respect to spectroscopy or otherwise.



2. Okay so Davisons out of print but it's so much better (and called Group Theory For Chemists)! This book is a bit badly laid out, doesn't explain things very well and is pretty much useless unless you already have at least a simple grasp of Group Theory. I don't know what awful libraries you lot in Cleveland have but this is certainly not a particularly good book.

No comments about Bioinorganic Chemistry: Inorganic Elements in the Chemistry of Life.

1 comments about Descriptive Inorganic Chemistry.

1. For the part Ionization potenttial, Electron affinity and electronegativity, there is not a clear precise definition of what those terms means.
   Mr and Mrs House, please be more careful!!!
   In general is a good book, but lacks depth in the topics covered

4 comments about Hydrogen: The Essential Element.

1. It makes sense, if you are going to try to understand something, to go to the simplest instance of it and get all the information you can from the subject unimpeded by complications. Hydrogen is the simplest of all atoms. It is all around us; though hydrogen gas floats out of our atmosphere to join the hydrogen atoms that are in the "vacuum" of space, hydrogen makes up a large proportion of stars, water, and ourselves. John S. Rigden has written an admiring tribute to the simplest atom, _Hydrogen: The Essential Element_ (Harvard University Press). It turns out that hydrogen has played an enormous role in our understanding of matter and energy, and that the simplest of atoms is so complicated and surprising that Rigden's book is a continual source of elemental wonder.

   Hydrogen is element number one, only a single electron orbiting a single proton. Repeatedly Rigden shows that this simplicity has been a boon to research. The lessons learned from this basic atom, in Rigden's story, form a history of physics in the twentieth century. The refinements to theory have largely been to explain the dark bands in the spectrum produce when hydrogen is made to glow. Niels Bohr produced the first modern picture of the atom, incorporating the experimental data from Rutherford and the hydrogen spectrum, but recklessly disregarding the historic laws of physics which he felt could not apply within the atom. He thus began the amazingly successful and fabulously strange quantum explanation for the behavior of matter. Rigden has not just included experimenters and theorizers, but also appealing stories about them, such as I. I. Rabi developing magnetic resonance in the 1930s to measure the nucleus, but then in 1988 being wheeled into a Magnetic Resonance Imaging machine. He said, "It was eerie... I would never have dreamed that my work would come to this." _Hydrogen_ is not just about understanding the inner workings of the atom, but also about hydrogen as the ticker of a clock, as anti-matter, and as a confirmer of big bang cosmology.

   There are plenty of challenging chapters here, meant for the non-scientist but not necessarily easy reading. Although the mathematics is not detailed, there are some equations shown that could be intimidating; Dirac's equation, predicting antiparticles and electron spin, Rigden assures us is a "little equation" that can be "written in one line," and while this is true, the line has twenty algebraic symbols in it. Also, surprisingly, there is little about the hydrogen bomb. Rigden decided that the bomb did not fit into the theme of how the hydrogen atom has led and will continue to lead to improved scientific knowledge. His charming and informative book shows how some mysteries have been solved but that we should never come to the conclusion that we are close to knowing all: "After all, H stands not only for hydrogen, but also for humility."




2. The author takes us on a history of 20th century physics by focusing on the signal element of Hydrogen. He does a good job of providing enough technical detail to make it clear why certain discoveries are important without overwhelming you. His choice of focusing on Hydrogen does limit him a little as to what he looks at though. A fairly short book so worth the investment in time for me.



3. John Rigden has achieved a remarkable synthesis here in humanizing what is normally a coldly inhuman subject. I have always been interested in the mechanics of subatomic processes, but have found it difficult to understand when presented as an end-product of research efforts. This book contextualizes the research effort in such a way as to relate the research findings to the real life people who struggled to obtain them. In the process, I ended up learning the details of the nature of hydrogen much better than in any other book.

   I think this kind of humanizing of physics is overdue and marks a welcome development for future efforts in physics writing. Physics is, in the end, a human endeavor and can only be understood in detail when presented as such.

   As an example of the difference, I will quote from page 216 in reference to David Schramm-- "David was a first-rate scientist, 'but,' as Margaret Geller has written, 'perhaps more important in this harsh world, he was an extraordinary person of great generosity and kindness.'"

   These words are apt for this effort by John Rigden... the book is a work of great generosity and kindness. I look forward to seeing this sentiment be taken up in future works in the field of physics.




4. An excellent description, not only of the Hydrogen atom, but the way that very simple structure informed scientists about more complex structures in the universe. Very well written and not mathematically intense.