Core essentials

Chemistry for the biosciences - the essential concepts

Jonathan Crowe, Tony Bradshaw and Paul Monk (eds)

Oxford: OUP 2006 | Pp496 | £22.99 | ISBN ISBN 0 199 28097 1

This text is what it says - essential chemical concepts for students studying the biosciences. These students need a firm grounding in the principles of chemistry to understand fully topics covered in life or bioscience degrees. 

Most existing texts aimed at this area emanate from the US and fail to cover organic chemistry to any useful extent apart from recognition of functional groups. Current general chemistry textbooks tend to be too detailed for these students and can scare them away from anything vaguely chemical when what we are trying to do is show them the pivotal role that chemistry plays in all the life sciences.