Scent and Chemistry: The Molecular World of Odors

This is one of the best books available to understand structure, synthesis, and use of hundreds of fragrance molecules. Perhaps beyond the ken of most perfume enthusiasts, the book is nonetheless very useful as a reference. There is a section following each chapter's discussion of a fragrance molecule family that actually details many commercially-available perfumes featuring a specific molecule, complete with concentrations! This volume will open up a new world to those who merely love perfume. For those of us with chemistry background, it is an indispensable grounding in the science of scent.

This book is choc-full-o-information and is very useful, I recommend it to anyone diving into perfumery. I do not have a strong chemistry background, just a little in high school and some self study. I also own The Chemistry of Fragrances. Both books are excellent but Scent and Chemistry is a lot more difficult to read because even the history sections are written from the perspective, mode of speech and writing style of a scientist so the information is not presented in a very interesting or approachable way to me as an artist. Annotation numbers referencing chemical bond diagrams break up every sentence, visually they are like speed and comprehension bumps in the text. If you are accustomed to reading white papers in chemistry this book might be easier for you to read through but it lacks that smooth cohesion that one would expect from a well written text book. I don't mean to say that it's not informative or that it's poorly written, it's just not well written in the way that a good writer does. The publisher could tone down the illustration numbers by removing the bold type-face and making them smaller than the rest of the text, that would improve readability. This book moreso than The Chemistry of Fragrances has tons of diagrams and illustrations but most of them are chemical bonds so you need to understand what you are looking at in order to find those illustrations useful in the context of the text since it is visually broken by the annotations. Over all I'd say this book is worth every penny and very valuable as a text book but there is always room for improvement.

Very good book for people interested in the fragrance chemistry. The text is nicely written and contained abundant bibliographic references. The figures are in color and printed with a high quality.

Great quality and my favorite book .Exactly the thing I was looking for

A scrupulous & delicate book with many information about odors and it's chemial mechanism, very useful for junior perfumer.

I am very happy with the product and the whole experience.

Best book on the subject that I’ve found.

This is not the book to buy if you want to know how to make a perfume. There is a ton of information on how individual aromachemicals are made-a lot of little representations of scent molecules etc and there are-if you care to painstakingly search through the entire book-tiny little morsels of info that are actually useful if you are trying to make a perfume.

This book reflects the developments of the last 150 years of fragrance chemistry in a very suitable way, not too superficial, and most of the times not too detailed, either. It gives timelines with molecules and their first or important uses in a perfume, interesting details, synthesis routes of important compounds in fragrance and key compounds in odour recognition and perfumery. Synthesis is a bit to extensive, but this is lagely compensated by the wholeness of the book's scope. - Still: This book may not be suitable for people without any basic knowledge in chemistry.

classic

All chapters are veru valuable. I'm interested to fragances and perfumery

I am still using this excellent book, referencing many odours and perfume ingredients, to this day. Its an absolute joy to read. Well set out and easy to reference. I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in the chemistry of odours.

Good book but not what I needed. Probably best for a student.