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Fields & Applications

Classic Chemistry

The cover of our first issue of 2015 features Lewis Carroll’s Alice climbing through a mirror into another world. Inspired by early references to chirality noted by Christopher Welch in this month’s feature on page 26, I went searching for additonal – more visual – representations and chanced upon Carroll’s intriguing and thought-provoking nod to stereoisomers (1):

“How would you like to live in Looking-glass House, Kitty? I wonder if they’d give you milk in there? Perhaps Looking-glass milk isn't good to drink”, says Alice to her black kitten in the first chapter of Through the Looking-Glass, before embarking on a new adventure.

Was Carroll (actually Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) accidentally referring to chirality or had he more deeply considered the fact that a stereoisomer of lactose – or any other nutritional molecule for that matter – could be indigestible, dangerous or simply tasteless? Perhaps we’ll never know for sure, but given the timing of the novel (1871) and Pasteur’s work on discriminating enantiomers in a mixture (1861), I think it’s more judgment than luck. Dodgson’s Oxford University background (in mathematics) probably saw him rubbing shoulders with the odd chemist or two...

Eager for more classic literature and chemistry, I came across another interesting use of chemistry in Elective Affinities where Goethe uses chemistry – specifically, the reaction between dilute sulfuric acid and limestone – as a simile for the unexpected but inevitable relationships that form when certain combinations of people come together:

“Suppose an A connected so closely with a B, that all sorts of means, even violence, have been made use of to separate them, without effect. Then suppose a C in exactly the same position with respect to D. Bring the two pairs into contact; A will fling himself on D, C on B, without its being possible to say which had first left its first connection, or made the first move towards the second.” (Elective Affinities, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, 1809). Life and love, it seems, are a little more complicated than ‘opposites attract’.

Finally, Charles Dickens really captures the spirit of analytical science with a wonderful simile: “Meanwhile the retainer goes round, like a gloomy Analytical Chemist: always seeming to say after ‘Chablis, sir?’ – ‘You wouldn’t if you knew what it’s made of.’ (Our Mutual Friend, Charles Dickens, 1864.) Thereafter, the servant is amusingly referred to as the Analytical Chemist.

Can you offer any classic references to your field?

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  1. tas.txp.to/0115/alice
About the Author
Rich Whitworth

Rich Whitworth completed his studies in medical biochemistry at the University of Leicester, UK, in 1998. To cut a long story short, he escaped to Tokyo to spend five years working for the largest English language publisher in Japan. "Carving out a career in the megalopolis that is Tokyo changed my outlook forever. When seeing life through such a kaleidoscopic lens, it's hard not to get truly caught up in the moment." On returning to the UK, after a few false starts with grey, corporate publishers, Rich was snapped up by Texere Publishing, where he spearheaded the editorial development of The Analytical Scientist. "I feel honored to be part of the close-knit team that forged The Analytical Scientist – we've created a very fresh and forward-thinking publication." Rich is now also Content Director of Texere Publishing, the company behind The Analytical Scientist.

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