"The Perks and Perils of Trespassing – the Making of..." Topic

… The Last Alchemist in Paris.

"Lars Öhrström's (@Larsohrstrom) popular science book The Last Alchemist in Paris was published by Oxford University Press in 2013, a Spanish edition came out in 2014, the Swedish translation in 2015 and an English pocket book edition was published in late 2015 with the title Curious Tales from Chemistry – The Last Alchemist in Paris and other Stories. A French translation will be out in fall 2016. When he is not making a nuisance of himself in other people's territories, Lars is Head of Programme in Chemical Engineering at Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden, and does research on Metal-Organic Frameworks, materials that may help us in the transition to green chemistry and green chemical engineering.
​It seems sometimes that knowing a lot about a particular subject disqualifies you of writing in other areas, whereas knowing nothing at all authorises you to be opinionated about almost anything. Partly this is in your own mind. Being academically proficient in one area usually, but sadly not always, means that you are aware of the depths of your ignorance in other subjects.

Some eight years ago I sat down to draw out a blueprint for a book that should tell stories about how the chemistry of individual elements of the periodic table had changed, for better or for worse, the courses of ordinary peoples' lives. Several things motivated me; I was sitting on a number of stories where literature and history intersected with chemistry that I would love to tell to a bigger audience, but I also found there was a lack of popular science books in chemistry that actually explained something, as opposed to just telling how things are. So, in short, it was a mixture of pleasure motivation and a pedagogical utility incentive springing from many years of undergraduate teaching that made me embark on this journey.

However, part of the idea was that there would be no scientist, no stories about the discovery of the elements and certainly no science history. What was then left for a chemical scientist to write about? My editor pointed out to me the benefits of having some more chemistry in the stories, adding that "we are, after all, a publisher with certain scientific ambitions" As always, she was right, and the science part got boosted up…"
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