The Pill, Pygmy Chimps, and Degas' Horse: The Autobiography of Carl Djerassi Carl Djerassi. Basic Books (HarperCollinsPublishers): New York, NY, 1992. 23 Figs., 25 photographs. viii + 319 pp. 15.3 x 23.3 cm. $25.00.
This recently puhlished autobiography of Carl Djerassi, best known for developing the birth control pill, The Pill, Pygmy Chimps, and Degas'Horse, deals in great detail with many of the more personal aspects of his life that are only mentioned in passing or alluded to in his "scientific" autobiography, Steroids Made It Possible, to which it forms a n ideal companion volume. The hook's unusual title is derived from the chapters on oral contraceptives (The Pill), Djerassi's attempts to establish scientific centers of excellence in Africa ("Pygmy Chimps", Chapter 14), and the genesis of his art collecting ("Degas' Horse", Chapter 17). Djerassi's name is virtually synonymous with one of the f r s t and most widely used steroid oral contraceptive agents, 19-nor-17aethynyltestosterone, commonly known as norethisterone or norethindrone, which his team first synthesized an October 15,1951, in the laboratories of Syntex, S. A. in Mexico City. The background and the events leading up to this synthesis and its a h m a t h are described in "Birth of the Pill" (Chapter 51, which is preceded by Djerassi's account of his group's earlier tour de force--the synthesis of cortisone in "No Depression" (Chapter 4). These two chapters, replete with 23 structural formulas, are the two most technical chapters of the book. This hook is intended for a general audience as well as for chemists and other scientists. It is our pleasure to recommend highly this important and engrossing autobiography of a complex, creative, articulate individual, who, with an unusual and refreshing frankness, successfully chronicles his gradual transition from a typically "hard" scientist to one with substantial "soR" overtones-a transformation traced "through [his] shifting attitude toward birth control in general and the Pill in particular."
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Georae B. Kauffmanand Laurie M. Kauffman CaliforniaState University, Fresno Fresno, CA 93740
Chemical Lectures of H. T. Scheffer Torbern Bergrnan (1775)(Editor)and J. A. Schufle (Translator). Kluwer Academic Publishers: Dordrecht, The NetherlandsIBoston, MNLondon, England, 1992. XI + 559 pp. Figs. &tables. 14.9 x 22.2 cm. $198.00. During his 1977 sahhatical leave at Uppsala University gathering material for his study of Bergman (173&1784), Schufle encountered a collection of lectures on chemistry by Henrik Theophilus Seheffer (171&1759), Director of the Mining College and Assayer a t the Royal Mint, both in Stockholm. Bergman has written a preface to Scheffer'~lectures, in which he called him "one of the greatest chemists that Sweden has had." He edited the lectures, added copious notes and comments, and had the collection published in 1775 in Uppsala. The book was well received, undergoing two further editions in Swedish (1779 and 1796) as well a s translationsinto German (17791, French (1787,18031, and Italian (1789). Schufle had long heen puzzled by the fact that Bergman, although the greatest chemist of his time, never wrote a textbook of chemistry. ARer studying Scheffer's lectures, he realized that, considering the extent of Bergman's additions, this was "as much Bergman's book a s it was Scheffer's." The hook admirably reflects the state of chemistry in Bergman's day, including how it was taught at Uppsala University, for Bergman intended it to he used a s a textbook in his own classroom and described it as "especially designed for those like me who teach chemistry."Thus it is "one of the first, if not the first, [ehemistryl texthook in any language," antedating Lavoisier's Daitd 4lPmentaire de Chimie (1789; translated into English in 1790). However, despite its obviously great importance to the history of chemistry, Bergman's edition of Seheffer's lectures had not been translated into English until the volume under review, Volume 14 of Kluwer's popular "Chemists
Volume 70
Number 2
February 1993
A53
