Impacts of icy comets and various space rocks gave our planet much of the surface water and supplies of many of the chemically more versatile elements, such as iron and phosphorus, that life depends upon. Read the book review.
It has been a pleasant surprise, then, to see a quirky novel about a chemist, with the word ‘chemistry’ in the title, would you believe, cause quite a stir and become a publishing success. Our chemist, Elizabeth Zott, embarks on research into the origins of life around 1950, when Marie Curie was the only female scientist anybody had ever heard of.