Greatest Books in Chemistry?

[ExploreScience]

What books on chemistry are on your must read list?

 

Are there any great reads that cover the history of chemistry?

[Horza2002]

Well that would depend on what topics and areas of chemistry that you want to read up in. For organic chemistry at University level, then "organic chemistry" by Clayden, Greeves, Warren and Wothers is a must. For inorganinc at University, then Shriver and Atkins is a must as well.

[ExploreScience]

Thanks for the suggestions.

 

Is there a great book on the history of chemistry, or a specific field within chemistry?

 

Beyond textbooks, are there any great autobiographies of great chemists through history?

[mississippichem]

A History of Chemistry: From the Earliest Times till the Present Day by James Campbell Brown:

 

The book was published in 1913 so a lot of concepts that seem revolutionary to the author are elementary to us now. I like it because it gave a nice insight into the collective conscious of chemistry right at the time quantum mechanics ideas were beginning to bounce around. Chemists at the time still hadn't figured out the difference between covalent bonds and ionic interactions so it's interesting to see their mistakes. Be careful though, there are a lot of factual inaccuracies in the book so one must keep in mind that this was written in 1913, before modern spectroscopy, intricate bond theories and full disclosure of Maxwell's dynamics to chemical systems.