Book to Note
 Patrick Coffey. Cathedrals of Science: The Personalities and Rivalries
That Made Modern Chemistry. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. 400 pp. $29.95.
Reviewed by Ron Reynolds
Patrick Coffey traces the development of physical chemistry
through the personalities and rivalries
of its pioneers from Arrhenius
to Pauling. P-chem was the “hot
science” of the 1920s, analogous to
today’s biotechnology or nanotechnology. Coffey presents frank
and unvarnished portraits of those
who unraveled the nature of the
atom: the reclusive Gilbert Lewis,
closeted with his handpicked students;
friendly, outgoing Irving Langmuir and his lightbulbs;
Walther Nernst’s popular German
laboratory and his fierce competitive
spirit; Fritz Haber’s vanity and
the institutional consequences it produced. Some fairly long sections
on key scientific concepts are
quite technical. The non-chemist
may prefer to skip these, but all
readers can appreciate the human
stories and frailties of the renowned chemists that Coffey depicts.
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