Catherine Jackson

Chemist, historian, and educator, Catherine M Jackson uses history to understand chemistry’s present and future, as well as its past. Built around practice-based breakthroughs including the glassware revolution and turn to synthesis, her book Molecular World (MIT Press, 2023) explains chemistry's quest to know and manipulate organic nature. A sequel Molecular Puzzles will show how utility—rather than theoretical correctness—lay behind the success of Kekulé’s benzene ring.