Alcohol, caffeine, nicotine, aspirin, heroine, anti-oxidants, flavours, pigments and penicillin are just a few obvious examples of NPs, almost all being made by plants or micro-organisms. This book tells their fascinating story with an impressive integration of much widely dispersed information. The approach challenges conventions and cuts across traditional boundaries whilst adopting the old-fashioned virtues of rational argument and historical analysis. There is an overarching consideration of Darwinian evolution and also of the evolution of ideas. Thanks to a liberal supply of historical notes, personal and often sharply critical opinions and an enlivening ability to broaden the context, Richard Firn's book is thus something of a page-turner and one a latter day Sherlock Holmes might conceivably have written."--Annals of Botany
"This unique volume will appeal to both scientists and casual readers, and provides a fitting capstone to the career of Richard Firn." -- The Quarterly Review of Biology
"Firn engages the reader by posing questions that we have all wondered about and then addresses them using examples that touch our daily lives." -- BioScience
Review
Alcohol, caffeine, nicotine, aspirin, heroine, anti-oxidants, flavours, pigments and penicillin are just a few obvious examples of NPs, almost all being made by plants or micro-organisms. This book tells their fascinating story with an impressive integration of much widely dispersed information. The approach challenges conventions and cuts across traditional boundaries whilst adopting the old-fashioned virtues of rational argument and historical analysis. There is an overarching consideration of Darwinian evolution and also of the evolution of ideas. Thanks to a liberal supply of historical notes, personal and often sharply critical opinions and an enlivening ability to broaden the context, Richard Firn's book is thus something of a page-turner and one a latter day Sherlock Holmes might conceivably have written."--Annals of Botany
"This unique volume will appeal to both scientists and casual readers, and provides a fitting capstone to the career of Richard Firn." -- The Quarterly Review of Biology
"Firn engages the reader by posing questions that we have all wondered about and then addresses them using examples that touch our daily lives." -- BioScience
Book Description
The first to descibe Natural Products (NPs) as a group in an evolutionary context.
From the Publisher
Richard Firn grew up on a farm near Edinburgh, went 3 miles to university to study agriculture but found chemistry more challenging. Using a scholarship to get to Australia, by chance he began research in plant physiology which he continued in the UK and the USA. In 1973 he joined the Biology Department at the University of York and by a series of chance events he was joined by his first graduate student, Clive Jones, who enjoyed speculating about the evolutionary significance of the many diverse chemicals in plants. Not only did Clive help Richard in the laboratory, he was even called upon to help Richard build the timber house in which he still lives. Some years later, while Richard was really trying to understand how plants sense and respond to gravity and light, Clive and Richard met up again and came up with the radical idea on which this book is based. Richard Firn died in May 2010.
About the Author
Richard Firn grew up on a farm near Edinburgh, went 3 miles to university to study agriculture but found chemistry more challenging. Using a scholarship to get to Australia, by chance he began research in plant physiology which he continued in the UK and the USA. In 1973 he joined the Biology Department at the University of York and by a series of chance events he was joined by his first graduate student, Clive Jones, who enjoyed speculating about the evolutionary significance of the many diverse chemicals in plants. Not only did Clive help Richard in the laboratory, he was even called upon to help Richard build the timber house in which he still lives. Some years later, while Richard was really trying to understand how plants sense and respond to gravity and light, Clive and Richard met up again and came up with the radical idea on which this book is based. Richard Firn died in May 2010.
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