The Emperor of Scent : A Story of Perfume, Obsession, and the Last Mystery of the Senses |...

The Emperor of Scent : A Story of Perfume, Obsession, and the Last Mystery of the Senses | CHANDLER BURR | Wonderful writing!,

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The Emperor of Sce...

	The Emperor of Scent : A Story of Perfume, Obsession, and the Last Mystery of the Senses CHANDLER BURR, 2003 - 336 pages average customer review:based on 43 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Luca Turin was born with an uncannily powerful nose, able to distinguish the components of any scent, from the world's most refined perfumes to the air on the New York subways. A scientist, he kept his powers to himself, concentrating on other fields. But when, for the love of it, he began to write reviews of fragrances, and those reviews took the world by storm, everything changed. The secret world of scent creation opened up, and Turin discovered something astonishing: No one understands how our noses work. Billions and billions of dollars are spent creating the scents all around us in a manner that amounts to a glorified trial and error. The solution to the mystery of every other human sense had led to a Nobel Prize. Why should smell be any different? Turin has given his life to this great riddle. And in the end, incredibly, after an epic struggle, he solved it. Then things got really interesting...Chandler Burr tells the extraordinary story of Luca Turin, his incredible sense of smell and his battles with the scientific establishment in as a remarkable quirky a tale of obsession as Susan Orlean's bestseller "The Orchid Thief".

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The Emporor Of Scent

I read everything Chandler Burr writes. This is his most magnificent offering - easy to follow and wonderful to know. He switches back and forth from NY to France over and over until you are entirely entranced.

Wonderful writing!,

Well written - hard to put down.
This book reveal the politics at the heart of the "scientific process" in a fascinating, entertaining, and completely personal way. Even the chemistry is made accessible and inspires a desire to learn more.
Burr's characterization of Turin is honest, funny and completely human. An excellent adventure! I can't wait to read more of his work!

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Fascenating and Entertaining

I absolutly loved this book. An incredible glimpse into the world of high science. An amazing treast on smell and fragrance. Not my usual sort of read, but I recently became interested in perfumes which led me to this book. I would reccomend it to anyone; it is both a page turner and a fabulous education on the world of smell. Who knew it could be so interesting! First I've read by this author - he has two others I can't wait to get my hands on.

lucid, dramatic, important...

I read this after What the Nose Knows.
It is very well written, conveys complexity in a dramatic and coherent matter, and offers very good insights into a corner of theoretical and applied science that gets over looked in part because it is draws from biology, chemistry and physics. Very good characterization of Luca Turin, the scientist. Flavors of The Double Helix - science in action, the mad race. But also, a nice work on chemistry in action, a rarity. The work is important because many of our premises about sensory inputs, whether sound, color or scent, rely on very cloudy thinking about man/nature interfaces, and unexamined notions of what makes one input primary and another secondary. Has thought evolved since Leucipus?

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The tzar of hype

Somewhere one-third into the book I begun experiencing an impatience with glaring inconsistencies between presented facts and Burr's interpretation of these facts. Around the non-chapter captioned "Author's notes" I decided that the title of this book should be "The tsar of hype".

Burr's mission statement is to present "modern morality tale" about a brilliant scientist spurned by obtuse, self-interested establishment. The picture is in black and white: an idealistic prodigy against a horde of venal, self-centered blockheads, dedicated solely to preserving their tenures and salaries. Now, let's look at the facts. Dr. Turin did not discover anything or formulate his own theory. He suffered some career mishap, which he will not talk about, in the early days, and had to forgo research for teaching. Quite accidentally he happened upon Vibration theory, and decided to champion this idea to the scientific community and the fragrance industry. His own motive is materialistic: the use of Vibration might automate scent creation process and cut production costs by getting rid of highly paid chemists, who craft smell molecules. There's not a word about process inventor royalties, because we are expected to view Dr.Turin as a modern day martyr and not a frustrated gold digger which he appears to be. There is a story about his snubbing a lesser periodical interested in publishing his paper until a highly prestigious journal refused to take it. There are other stories about his use of family connections to reach perfume houses owners and CEO's. All this adds up to a portrait of a media-conscious entrepreneur, not a scientist.

We also get a glimpse of Turin's interaction with his colleagues in the detailed account of the conference in Coorg. I don't see why the quoted questions were considered hostile. Clearly the audience didn't trust hypothesis based on intuition and conjectures and insisted on empirical data. These never came, the only unquestionable expertise displayed by Dr. Turin being his ability to identify perfume worn by accidental passers-by.

On the bright side, Vibration and its prophet became popular in the circles of bedroom psychologists, aromatherapists and holistic health practitioners. Alas, we are plainly told that those are precisely the occupational groups which Dr. Turin disdains and would like to avoid any association with. Irony of fate?

The best footnote to this "morality tale" wrote stolid academic establishment itself, by granting in 2004 Nobel Prize to Dr.Linda Buck for discovery of DNA sequences related to smell. The name of Dr. Buck recurs in the story a few times, always in context of "poor proof" for the theory of Weak Shape. In fact, Burr insinuates that Dr. Buck's work is somehow inferior to intellectual feats of Dr.Turin. I couldn't help recalling the old adage "if the facts are against us let's deny the facts".

But, in spite of all its propaganda aspect, the story is interesting, and very frank about the lengths scientists are willing to go in order to reach fame, and perhaps riches. After all, it is a morality tale, though the reader is likely to arrive at a conclusion not intended by the author.

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