Carsten Reinhardt, Shifting and Rearranging. Physical Methods and the Transformation of Modern Chemistry.
Science History Publications, Watson Publishing International, Sagamore Beach, MA, 2006, ix + 428 pp., ISBN 0-88135-354-X, $ 49.95.
Organic spectroscopy applies physical methods to determining the structure of the molecules organic chemists isolate, make and test. It came of age during the Golden Sixties. The twin engines to lift it to prominence were mass spectrometry (ms), which engineers developed in the nineteen-fifties for analyzing hydrocarbons present in oil; and nuclear magnetic resonance (nmr), discovered in the aftermath of World War II. Carsten Reinhardt, an historian from the University of Regensburg, Germany, has now chronicled the early times of organic spectroscopy.
Organic spectroscopy rose in a bleak landscape. Available instrumental techniques were indirect (dipolemetry, ultraviolet electronic spectra interpreted with the Woodward rules, infrared spectroscopy), limited to small or highly symmetrical molecules in the gas phase (electron diffraction, microwave spectrometry), or yet excruciatingly labor- and time-intensive (X-ray diffraction).