Chemistry of carbohydrates
Sixteen
years in retirement have not dimmed my interest in science,
particularly the chemistry of the sugars. For the first eight years I
kept in touch by continuing my ongoing service as an editor of
"Carbohydrate Research", then the publishers decided that superannuated
editors were not what the journal really needed. Anyway, ten years in
an editor's chair is enough for anybody! More recently I've been
engaged in mentoring some undergraduate research students in Chemistry.
The impetus for their project was Prof. B. Shakhashiri's curiosity
about the chemistry of one of his lecture demonstrations, the 'Blue
Bottle Experiment'. Sugars are involved. We hope to illuminate the
details of the blue bottle reaction, and in addition, with the
availablilty of modern tools such as rapid scanning UV-visible
spectrophotometers we believe we will be able to produce some results
of general significance in sugar chemistry. Undergraduates in any major
who are eligible to register for Chemistry 299 or 699 (Directed Study)
are candidates for participation in this research.