Reactions

Letters to the editor

Beauty in chemistry

Since C&EN unfortunately no longer publishes book reviews, thank you for your editorial providing a review of the recently published book The Beauty of Chemistry: Art, Wonder, and Science (C&EN, May 24, 2021, page 2). C&EN used to publish book reviews but quit several years ago. I among others suggest that you reinstitute book reviews, and there are several of us, accomplished reviewers of books on chemistry, who would be happy to provide reviews.

The title of the online version of this editorial says, “Chemistry Is the Most Creative of the Sciences. But Is It Beautiful?” This chemist with several years of experience in organic synthesis, no artist but an appreciator of art in many formats, answers a resounding yes. Like Shakespeare, I believe that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I also believe that I’ve had a lifelong quest for both chemical knowledge and beauty and that the two quests often merge.

R. E. “Bob” Buntrock
Orono, Maine

I just read your excellent editorial from a few weeks ago and wanted to mention the many connections that I find in art and chemistry. Collections of manuscripts of a particular chemist are as descriptive and distinctive of the person’s lifelong contributions as are collections of Picasso or Jackson Pollock.

But I write to offer you a beautiful molecule that my graduate students made recently. We see it as an asymmetric butterfly. And we asked, “Why is it not symmetrical?” (Inorg. Chem. 2021, DOI: 10.1021/acs.inorgchem.1c00987). As you mention in reference to Immanuel Kant in the editorial, it is the departure from the regular that makes it beautiful. Our molecular butterfly is a rarity, as are asymmetric butterflies in nature. Those in nature have bilateral gynandromorphism. Here I superimpose our molecular structure of an asymmetric butterfly on one of those found in nature. This is the table-of-contents graphic.

Marcetta Y. Darensbourg
College Station, Texas