Smell is the most mysterious of the senses, mysterious in its power to trigger memory and feeling, equally mysterious in the way it operates. Exactly how does the human body receive, process and identify scent?
\"Smell is unlimited, like the immune system,\" writes Chandler Burr in \"The Emperor of Scent,\" the fascinating story of the man who cracked these mysteries, \"and yet it is instant, like the digestive system.\" We identify smells in an instant, and smell more than 10,000 scents.
For decades scientists have believed receptors in the nose identify scent molecules by their shape. The atomic structure of a molecule gives each substance a unique shape, and thus a unique smell.
The seven large international perfume manufacturers known as the Big Boys employ huge laboratories of chemists to manufacture and test new scent combinations. Each company creates between 500 and 2,000 new molecules a year, at a cost of about $4,000 each. Of these, perhaps 20 are interesting and strong enough to pass along to perfumers. Toxicology testing costs another $250,000 per molecule. Eventually, rarely, one will end up on the market.
All this effort is based on the belief that scent is a product of molecular shape.
Burr tells the story of Luca Turin, a French-raised biologist with a miraculous nose. Like the hero of Patrick Susskind\'s novel \"Perfume,\" Turin has the ability to identify the most subtle and intricate fragrances, including classic European perfumes, and the equally miraculous power of putting their characteristics into words.
His 1992 perfume guide became famous within the industry for the precision of his analyses and the startling honesty of his opinions.
Over the past decade, Turin has come to advance a different theory of scent, based not on shape but on molecular vibration. \"The Emperor of Scent\" tells how he set out to prove his theory, and the even more complex and intriguing story of how he then tried to persuade the scientific community to accept his conclusions.
Burr\'s book is part scientific report, part detective story, part biography. Turin is an engaging character, bawdy and outspoken and highly opinionated, straight in an realm of expertise inhabited largely by gay men. What gives his story drama is his resistance to inbred, conventional wisdom. Many prestigious careers and many millions in research funds were vested in the idea that scent originated in molecular shape. Turin\'s theory was likely to win him few friends and many powerful opponents.
\"What the big papers are built on, what gets you publication in Nature and the front page of the New York Times Science Times section, what hooks the grants and hauls in the big prizes,\" writes Burr, \"is the airtight, foolproof experiment. That was what Turin needed.\"
Burr is a science writer for the Atlantic, where this book incubated. It throws light on the workings of the scientific community, and the surprising opposition a new idea foments when it goes against vested interests.
\"I have never in my career experienced the degree of juvenile reactions, unprofessionalism, and hysteria as I did from the molecular biologists, chemists, and physicists who believe in Shape,\" writes Burr.
Redolent with the legends of the world\'s great perfumes, \"The Emperor of Scent\" is that rare book that will appeal both to the aesthete and to the average reader.
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