Библиотека: Химия

Еще во времена средневековья было замечено, что химия и поэзия имеют много общего; в обоих случаях при "смешивании компонентов" создается нечто новое. И в том, что эти два вида творческой деятельности переплетаются и зачастую неразрывно связаны - нет ничего удивительного. (см. подборку на сайте http://www.chemheritage.org/library/featured_books/poetry/index.html#)

А вот какое объявление редактора Nature Chemistry появилось в блоге The Sceptical Chymist 1 апреля 2010 г. :

Rhyming research
Great science is not easily recognized without good writing skills. In view of this, we have decided to introduce a new prerequisite for the consideration of manuscripts at Nature Chemistry: Authors are requested to include a short poem highlighting the novel conclusions of their work. (Special consideration will be given to those who prepare their entire manuscript in iambic pentameter.)

This new submission requirement will be in effect from the date of this blog post.

Steve
Stephen Davey (Associate Editor, Nature Chemistry)

Этот призыв нашел живой отклик у авторов:

An elementary requirement
For work as great as mine
I know you'll like my paper
About water into wine.
So how about a highlight
Right above the fold
And a twenty page article
For all my words of gold? Была упомянута и статья-поэма Comparative mobility of halogens in reactions of dihalobenzenes with potassium amide in ammonia была опубликована в журнале J. Org. Chem., 36, 184–186 (1971); DOI: 10.1021/jo00800a036, http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/jo00800a036) "Reactions of potassium amide
With halobenzenes in ammonia
Via benzyne intermediates occur[3,4]."



Нельзя не упомянуть о еще одном примере, достойном подражания. Роалд Хоффман, Roald Hoffmann, поэт и химик, лауреат Нобелевской премии по химии 1981 г., в свое время опубликовал обзор в журнале Angewandte Chemie (DOI: 10.1002/anie.200900373) , аннотация которого приведена ниже: If, to ammonia one adds a metal,
The solution grows real unsettled.
A fine blue color is seen throughout
First by Humphry Davy, no doubt.
From lithium, electrons are released
The density of the solution decreased!
Soaked electrons are born, spins pair
Until a real band forms, debonaire!
Lowering the T of this ebullition
Impels a liquid-liquid partition,
Superconductivity? Why not?
Molecular orbitals hit the spot.
From blue to gold, the story unfolds. В недавнем интервью Роалд Хоффман сказал, отвечая на вопросы корреспондента "The Dartmouth Undergraduate Journal of Science":
"Why do you write poetry?
Poetry allows me to express myself in ways that are different from what I can do in science. So it is personal expression, but I also feel I have something to communicate to other people. I do write about science occasionally and I try to work in scientific metaphors. In the discussion with a poetry group they were very interested by it, a scientist writing poetry. So I have to get it out of the way by writing a few poems about science before I can write about nature or relationships or things like that. I’ve also written about my childhood in WWII.

Where does the inspiration for your poems come from?
Some of the poems are drawn from direct experience. Some of them I’m thinking about what happened, for instance there’s a poem in there “The Bond” which doesn’t refer to a chemical bond, but I was thinking about the strong tie in those terrible times between the people in a concentration camp and their guards because everything depended on the guards. That short poem is a powerful one but it comes out of thinking about what happened, not my personal experience.
It usually starts off from a phrase – two or three words that somehow mean more than the words by themselves do and rather than work off an idea I work off a group of words and build a poem. For example the phrase “a knife made of an old ram’s horn.” Usually I go through on the poems many more drafts than I do on a scientific article. This is a shorter unit of work, though some of the poems are long, like two pages, but maybe that’s because I’ve done the articles for 45 years and poems for 25 years. Poems are more like gifts and most of it comes in the beginning but most of the time I’m struggling through twenty thirty drafts – alternating between writing by hand and typing it up. The word processing helps a lot. I work harder on the poems than I do on the science." (Полный текст интервью можно прочитать здесь)
В заключение приятно отметить, что молодое поколение также неравнодушо к химии:
"Chemistry Class" Chemistry class, chemistry class,
The class in which I do surpass!
The class I really most enjoy,
My teacher, though, I do annoy!

Mixing that, twirling this,
Adding 'till I hear a hiss!
Prompting looks up from her desk,
Towards my beaker, statuesque!

Heating up, cooling down,
My teacher watches, face a frown!
Lovely liquid, yellow bubbles,
Teacher's ready for the troubles!

Exploding here, exploding there,
Yellow globs in teacher's hair!
It's dripping onto teacher's shawl,
And creeping down the classroom wall!

Fizzle here, fizzle through,
Oh no, I think I'm in a stew!
It's eaten through the wooden floor,
And dropped below on Mr. Moore!

Chemistry mess, much distress,
My brew today did not impress!
Chemistry is my favorite class,
But that's my last, I think, alas ©2005 Gareth Lancaster (опубликовано на сайте http://www.fizzyfunnyfuzzy.com/showpoem.php?poemID=73 ) P.S. Ну одним из первых заговорил о химии в стихах Тит Лукреций Кар, в поэме О природе вещей.

	Chemistry, Poetry and Artistic Illustration.pdf (493.20 КБ.) "Chemistry, Poetry, and Artistic Illustration: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Teaching and Promoting Chemistry" by Ping Y. Furlan,* Herbert Kitson, and Cynthia Andes Department of Chemistry, University of Pittsburgh at Titusville, Titusville, PA