Description
The most entertaining science book you will ever read. Chandler Burr's The Emperor of Scent tells of Luca Turin: the brilliant, pugnacious biophysicist who claimed to have solved the mystery of smell — and took on the entire perfume establishment to prove it, armed with data, charm, and magnificent rudeness. Turin's theory (vibration, not shape) made him a heretic; his personality made him a legend. Burr follows the feud with the industry, the Nobel dreams, the beautiful science. It is a story about how knowledge actually advances: messily, personally, gloriously — and it happens to be hilarious.
The Emperor of Scent: A Story of Perfume, Obsession, and the Last Mystery of the Senses by Chandler Burr (Random House, 2002) tells the story of Luca Turin — scientist, aesthete, and maverick — and his quest to solve one of science's last great mysteries: how we smell. Turin proposed a radical idea: that our noses detect not the shape of molecules, as orthodoxy held, but their vibrations. Dismissed by the scientific establishment and the powerful perfume industry, he spent years fighting to prove his theory, in a battle as much about ego and money as about science. Burr, who followed Turin for four years, writes with the pace of a thriller and the nose of a connoisseur.
The result is a book that is part scientific detective story, part portrait of obsession, and part guided tour through the secretive world of perfume — from the laboratories to the luxury houses of Paris. You will learn how the perfume industry really works, why it resisted Turin's idea so fiercely, and what the fight reveals about how science treats outsiders. Witty, erudite, and utterly fascinating, The Emperor of Scent will change the way you think about your senses. Essential reading for science lovers, perfume devotees, and anyone who enjoys a true story of a brilliant outsider taking on the system. Brilliant, funny, and full of wonderful smells — you will never sniff perfume the same way. Get the ebook edition here at a discount from Tellebook.
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