Chemical Education Today
Book & Media Reviews edited by
Astrochemistry—From Astronomy to
Astrobiology
by Andrew M. Shaw
Wiley: Chichester, England, 2006. 352 pp. ISBN
0470091371, $60 (paperback).
ISBN 0470091363 $145 (cloth).
reviewed by Richard Pagni
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My first scientific love was astronomy, undoubtedly
spurred by visits to the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, where
I grew up. Although I eventually chose chemistry over as-
tronomy as a profession, my affection for the subject has never
waned. How can one not get excited by relativity, black holes,
the big bang, the background microwave radiation, dark mat-
ter, dark energy, and so many other things? It still is exhila-
rating to look up in the sky before dawn and see the
constellation Orion, the hunter, whose red giant star, Betel-
geuse, is so large that if it were at the center of our solar sys-
tem, Earth would be in its interior.
Although physics is central to understanding the makeup
and history of the universe, chemistry also plays a very promi-
nent role. The stellar synthesis of atoms in the interiors of
stars and supernovae, after all, ultimately led to simple and
then complex life by as yet poorly understood pathways. The
story of this complex evolution from atoms to life is described
in Andrew Shaw’s very readable textbook, Astrochemistry—
From Astronomy to Astrobiology.
One cannot, of course, begin a discussion of astro-
chemistry without first describing what is known about the
origin of the universe. At its beginning the universe was
unimaginably hot and dense and expanded rapidly. When the
expansion slowed sufficiently, the hydrogen and traces of other
low atomic number atoms, which had been created in this
cataclysm, coalesced under the influence of gravity to form
galaxies and first generation stars where nucleosynthesis gen-
erated atoms with atomic numbers through iron. These stars
eventually ran out of fuel. Those that were several times more
massive than our sun succumbed to gravity at their death, pro-
ducing spectacular explosions called supernovae that com-
pleted the synthesis of the remaining elements. These early
supernovae spewed out enormous quantities of atoms, pro-
viding material for second generation stars such as our sun
and its solar system of planets, moons, asteroids, and comets.
These bodies as well as giant molecular clouds are the nurser-
ies for the synthesis of complex molecules. Close to one hun-
dred molecules have been identified to date in these enormous
clouds, for example. Even though I thought I knew quite a
www.JCE.DivCHED.org • Vol. 84 No. 2 February 2007
Jeffrey Kovac
University of Tennessee
Knoxville, TN 37996-1600
bit about these topics, I learned much more on reading this
book. I think the reader will be amazed at how much infor-
mation one can learn about the size, density, and surface tem-
perature of a star by application of basic principles of physics
and physical chemistry. Identifying atoms in stars and the hun-
dred or so molecules in gaseous clouds (the building blocks
of life) requires a detailed knowledge of spectroscopy, a sub-
ject that is clearly and extensively discussed in the book.
As the origin of life is a major theme of the text, the
author spends considerable productive time describing what
scientists believe to be the exogenous and endogenous syn-
thesis of the basic molecules of life in the pre-biotic world
and how these may have coalesced into self-replicating primi-
tive cells. The author devotes a couple of speculative pages
on the origin of homochirality, a topic of current interest to
me (1). This is perhaps the most enigmatic feature of the
poorly understood mechanism by which life began. The au-
thor loses his way a bit in his discussion of homochirality.
He confuses, for example, D and L, which refer to the abso-
lute configuration of amino acids and sugars, with d and l,
which refer to the sign of rotation an optically active mol-
ecule yields in a polarimeter.
The book is arranged into 10 chapters on a variety of
topics only a few of which I alluded to above. The final chap-
ter, for instance, deals with the Saturnian moon, Titan, where
some astronomers speculate life may exist. Because this is a
textbook, the author has been attentive to the needs of stu-
dents and has included in each chapter a large number of
clear drawings, figures, pictures, equations, and a large set of
interesting problems, some of which are answered in one of
several appendices at the end of the book. There are in addi-
tion a beautiful set of color plates in the center of the book,
an extensive glossary of terms, and a thorough bibliography
of books and papers for those who wish to explore topics in
greater detail. I found the index a bit sketchy, but with a little
effort I always found what I was seeking.
I read the book for enjoyment, and I am sure others will
do this as well, but it can stand on its own for a course in
astrochemistry or pre-biotic chemistry. The textbook will also
make a nice supplement to undergraduate courses in organic
chemistry and in particular physical chemistry.
Literature Cited
1. Compton, R. N.; Pagni, R. M. The Chirality of Biomolecules
in Adv. Atom. Mol. Phys. 2002, 48, 219–261.
Richard Pagni is a member of the Department of Chemis-
try, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996-1600;
rpagni@utk.edu.
• Journal of Chemical Education 233