Chemical Education Today
Circular Dichroism and Linear Dichroism Alison Rodger and Bengt Norden. Oxford University Press: New York, 1997. ISBN 0-19-885897-X. $60.00.
This short book is the first volume to appear in the Oxford Chemistry Masters series, which will deal with important topics, both established and developing, that a senior-level or beginning graduate student might encounter for the first time. To make the books accessible, little prior knowledge of the topics will be required. A good foundation in undergraduate chemistry will be assumed, however. This volume deals specifically with two powerful, independent but often complementary, topics: circular dichroism (CD), which deals with the differential absorption of left-handed and right-handed circularly polarized light by optically active molecules, usually involving electronic transitions in the visible and ultraviolet regions of the electromagnetic spectrum; and linear dichroism (LD), which deals with the differential absorption of linearly polarized light (really a superposition of left-handed and right-handed circularly polarized light) of oriented molecules, not necessarily optically active, parallel and perpendicular to the orienting axes. Although these techniques have usually been applied to the study of organic and biological molecules, they are also very useful for the study of inorganic compounds, as demonstrated in this book. The book is divided into seven sections (plus four appendices) and contains material on elementary topics, CD of biomolecules, LD of biomolecules and small molecules, CD of electric dipole allowed and magnetic dipole allowed transitions, magnetic CD, and CD formalism. The authors, Alison Rodger and Bengt Norden, who are acknowledged experts and practitioners of these methodologies, have nicely followed the philosophy of the series as described in the first paragraph. They assume no prior knowledge of CD and LD and their writing is clear and concise. The first two or three chapters are largely qualitative in nature, while the latter ones are presented with increasing mathematical rigor. A good working knowledge of trigonometry, vectors, complex numbers, matrices, quantum mechanics and its associated mathematics, and some group theory is needed to benefit fully from the well-presented material in each of the latter chapters. The book presents a wealth of information in an attractive, readable fashion. The drawings, figures, and graphs are clearly presented—a requirement for topics where geometry plays such a critical role. I particularly enjoyed reading about the diverse methods used to orient molecules for LD (photoselection, surprisingly, was not described), the tricks of the trade for obtaining high-quality CD spectra, the octant rule, and exciton CD, one of the few methods for obtaining the absolute configuration of an optically active molecule. I was also pleased to find the book to be almost free of errors (only a dozen and a half or so)—which is essential for any book claiming to be a textbook. I believe that the authors have succeeded in their objective of writing a concise, readable, eye-pleasing, but mathematically rigorous book on CD and LD. Anyone, student or even professor, who reads this book with care and diligence will then have the competence to rigorously apply CD and LD to chemical problems. R. M. Pagni Department of Chemistry University of Tennessee Knoxville, TN 37996-1600
JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu • Vol. 75 No. 9 September 1998 • Journal of Chemical Education
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