Elegant Solutions will be of value to chemical educators who want to go beyond the textbooks, to provide both historical perspectives and context for great experiments. Ball takes an ecumenical approach to chemistry, including in the book essentially physical measurements such as the precise work of Henry Cavendish that proves water is not an element (Chapter 2), and Louis Pasteur’s first resolution of chiral crystals (Chapter 6) as well as thoroughly chemical topics such as Woodward’s synthesis of vitamin B₁₂ (Chapter 9), Leo Paquette’s work on organic molecules that mimic the structure of Platonic solids (Chapter 10), Urey and Miller’s experiments on prebiotic chemistry (Chapter 7), and Bartlett’s demonstration that the inert gases are not so inert after all (Chapter 8). A surprising number of the chapters have to do with radioactive elements, including Seaborg’s synthesis and the chemical characterization of new elements (Chapter 5), the discovery of the nature of alpha radiation by Ernest Rutherford (Chapter 4), and Marie Curie’s isolation of radium and polonium (Chapter 3).

The eclectic list of experiments that are described in Elegant Solutions would have been chosen by no one but Philip Ball, but his talent for description and his ability to place science in perspective make this a very entertaining and useful compilation.

Literature Cited

1. Ball, Philip. Life’s Matrix: A Biography of Water; University of California Press: Berkeley, CA, 2001.
2. Ball, Philip. Bright Earth: Art and the Invention of Color; University of Chicago Press: Chicago, IL, 2003.
3. Ball, Philip. Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another; Farrar, Straus and Giroux: NY, 2004.