also chaos theory reached its zenith ofpopularity. Unfortunately, the popularityappears to have decreased in recentyears, but their scientific relevance hasnot, of course. The article gives a surveyon how chemical waves, which are, forexample, produced in a Belousov–Zha-botinsky reaction, can be modelled.S"rbu and Pop add a fifth review onfuzzy soft-computing methods, whichcovers algorithms such as neural nets,genetic algorithms, and, particularly,fuzzy logic. These are of particular valuefor data analysis or pattern recognition ifnot suffciently enough data are availableto phrase and/or answer a question andif a high precision of the calculatedanswer is not needed. The final treatiseby Ekins and Swaan concludes thevolume with an up-to-date review ofenzyme modelling in terms of descrip-tors used within quantitative structure–activity relationship techniques with re-spect to drug absorption, metabolism,distribution, excretion and toxicology.The number of enzymes discussed inthis last review is impressive.

To summarize, also the presentvolume of the Reviews in ComputationalChemistry contributes to the successstory of this series. Needless to say thatthe 20th volume continues to providedetailed reference and author indicesand a homogeneous layout throughout.The editors have done an excellent joband the book is a must on every bookshelf of computational chemistry litera-ture.

Prof. Markus ReiherInstitute of Physical ChemistryUniversity of Jena07743 Jena (Germany)

Molecular Light Scatteringand Optical Activity2nd Edition. By Laurence Barron.

Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,2004. 466 pp., hardcover £ 85.00.—ISBN0-521-81341-7

The book “Molecular Light Scatteringand Optical Activity” describes the cur-rent understanding of optical activityand related polarized light scattering ef-fects.

Materials rotating the plane of polar-ized light are said to be optically active.Optically active molecules are nonsuper-imposable on their mirror images andare called chiral. Optical activity is basedon a different response of chiral mole-cules to right- and left-circularly polar-ized light. Optical activity measurementswill gain more importance in the nextyears, since they are capable determin-ing the molecular stereochemistry ofmolecules in solution or even in vivo. Anunderstanding of chirality is central tothe study and application of the molecu-lar sciences, and there is little doubt thatits importance will increase since chirali-ty is of utmost importance in life sincenature itself is chiral. A lot of natural oc-curring substances such as, for example,amino acids, terpenes, carbohydrates, oralkaloids are often enantiopure or atleast enantioenriched, that is, one of theenantiomers predominates over theother. The occurence of chirality innature usually results in totally differenteffects of the two enantiomers on cells,that is, only one enantiomer leads to thecorrect response in a living organism. Asa consequence, normally only one enan-tiomer of a given drug has the desiredactivity. Hence, understanding chirality isextremely important in the developmentof therapeutic drugs. Medicinal chemis-try or pharmacy has a very strong needfor enantioselective processes in drugdevelopment and optical activity meas-urements are used more and more to in-vestigate the three-dimensional structureof biomolecules.

The book “Molecular Light Scatteringand Optical Activity” derives a semiclassi-cal theory of optical activity and relatedphenomena based on the scattering ofpolarized light from molecules and will

ensure the reader has a thorough theo-retical understanding of optical activityand chirality, its importance and its vari-ous applications.

Chapter 1 gives an overview of thehistory of various optical activity phe-nomena. The next chapter provides thefeatures of classical electrodynamics andperturbation theory needed to derivethe semiclassical description of molecu-lar scattering of polarized light present-ed in chapter 3. This chapter being themost important one of the book devel-ops expressions for the molecular scat-tered light intensity and polarisation.With the help of theses expressions allthe optical activity phenomena present-ed in the following chapters can be ex-plained and interpreted. Chapter 4 dealswith the application of symmetry consid-erations to optical activity phenomena.Chapters 5–8 give an in-depth mostlytheoretical discussion of the most impor-tant optical activity phenomena andtheir applications. Chapter 5 starts with adetailed description of the traditional,natural optical activity phenomena: opti-cal rotation and circular dichroism in thevisible and near-ultraviolet range of theelectromagnetic spectrum, that is, in res-onance with an electronic transition ofchiral molecules. The following shortchapter 6 is concerned with the electron-ic optical rotation and circular dichroismin the presence of a magnetic field.Chapter 7 deals with vibrational opticalactivity—a rather new topic which willgain more and more importance in thefollowing years especially in biomolecu-lar science. For a successful applicationof natural optical activity in the electron-ic spectrum the investigated moleculesmust exhibit a chromophore absorbinglight in the visible or near-ultravioletregion. If the electronic absorption lies inthe far-ultraviolet, which is true for moststructural units in a molecule, or themolecule has no chromophor at all thetraditional natural electronic optical ac-tivity measurements cannot be appliedfor stereochemical studies. Howeverthere is still the possibility of utilizing op-tical activity phenomena in resonancewith a vibrational transition of chiralmolecules. The two commonly used vi-brational spectroscopic techniques areinfrared (IR) absorption and Raman spec-

ChemPhysChem 2005, 6, 1419 – 1422 www.chemphyschem.org D 2005 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH&Co. KGaA, Weinheim 1421

troscopy. Chapter 7 covers the recentstate-of-the-art vibrational optical activitytechniques of vibrational circular dichro-ism and Raman optical activity. The bookends with a chapter about antisymmetricscattering and magnetic Raman opticalactivity.

As intended by the author the bookmainly emphasizes the theoretical back-ground of the various optical activityphenomena and focuses not so muchon the experiments, their technical re-quirements, the signal and its interpreta-tion. However at the end of the chap-ters 5–8 various illustrative examples aregiven to illuminate the presented theory.The book provides the necessary theo-retical background to understand thephysical processes of optical activity. Thisbook will be invaluable to graduate stu-dents who enter this complex and rapid-ly developing field as well as a referencefor experienced scientists in this field.This book will also be of high relevanceto instructors, who are faced with teach-ing this subject since it provides analmost comprehensive theoretical treat-ment of a variety of optical activity andrelated phenomena.

In general I think the book “MolecularLight Scattering and Optical Activity” byLaurence Barron, being one of theworld’s leading scientists in this researcharea, brings together the many facets ofoptical activity into a comprehensiveentity.

Priv.-Doz. Dr. Michael SchmittInstitut fIr Physikalische ChemieFriedrich-Schiller-UniversitJt JenaHelmholtzweg 407743 Jena (Germany)DOI: 10.1002/cphc.200500003

Soft Machines—Nanotechnology and LifeBy Richard A. L. Jones.

Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004.238 pp. , hardcover, £ 16.99.—ISBN 0-19-852855-8

In his book entitled “Soft Machines” Ri-chard Jones gives an overview about thebiological aspects of nanotechnology, anarea of research that sometimes is callednanobiotechnology. This area of researchis still growing rapidly and there are notmany text books available yet. Therefore,there certainly is a need for books de-scribing the general principles of nano-biotechnology. After a brief overviewsome basic techniques and machines areexplained. How can we observe thingson the nanometre scale? This chapter in-troduces basic imaging techniques start-ing from the classical optical light micro-scope and ending with state-of-the-artinstruments such as electron and scan-ning probe microscopy. In the followinga broad range of interesting topics is ad-dressed. Is it possible to construct ananoassembler that builds complex mol-ecules by putting them together atomby atom? How can the concept of self-assembly be harnessed to construct “softmachines”? How can “chemical comput-ers” be built? How can organic mole-cules replace silicon in electronic devi-ces? From my point of view the selec-tion of topics as well as the selection ofexamples, which introduce the topics,are excellent. The author understands toselect highlights from primary publica-tions in a well-balanced way. Throughouthis book the author is describing every-thing in a narrative way. From my point

of view this style is very entertaining forsomeone who is already working in thefield of nanobiotechnology. Little anec-dotes, many comparisons to related phe-nomena, as well as stories about the his-toric origins of ideas and concepts bringa lot of information to the reader, whichI did not know before. Compared to clas-sical text books this style might becalled unorthodox, but I would call it en-tertaining for the educated reader.

However, this constraint is exactly theproblem I see with this book. I doubtthat a student who did not hear any-thing about quantum mechanics yet canunderstand, for example, the chapterabout quantum dots in this way. Un-fortunately, it takes a lot of basics to un-derstand physics. As a text book for stu-dents from my point of view this book istoo superficial.

Too many details are explained with-out putting the fundaments before.Often a little sketch would be very help-ful to illustrate some of the underlyingphysical principles. Images are ofteneasier to understand than words, butonly photos from the primary literatureare included in this book.

Therefore, I can recommend this bookto people who have a solid backgroundin physics, but I cannot recommend it asa classical text book for students.

Dr. Wolfgang ParakApplied PhysicsLMU MInchen (Germany)

1422 D 2005 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH&Co. KGaA, Weinheim www.chemphyschem.org ChemPhysChem 2005, 6, 1419 – 1422