Carbon One Atom's Odyssey

About this book

Carbon: One Atom's Odyssey is an illustrated adaptation of Carbon, a short story from Italian chemist, writer, and Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi. It traces the life story and many molecular manifestations of a single atom of this life-essential element. You'll follow one atom from its spectacular birth 14 billion years ago through its harrowing journey on planet earth where it has become a basic building block of nearly 10 million known compounds in living things. Along the way, you'll learn that it is breathed in by the Peregrine Falcon; it is dissolved in the ocean before making its way back into the atmosphere; it is found in your pencil as well as in your liver; it helps trees grow strong and tall; and it even lets a moth's eye make sense of light.

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Biography

John Barnett is a life-long, self-taught lover of science. His favourite job was as a shepherd in Cornwall, England. For many years he enjoyed working as a carpenter, even building his own sailboat which, last he knew, still floats. For the past decade, he has called himself a graphic designer and illustrator, skills he has applied to many books. This book is the first of his own. The drawings within were done 'old-school' with fine-tipped mechanical pencils on paper. John currently lives on the shore of (and quite often on) Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island with his wife and three children.

Roald Hoffmann was born in 1937 in Zloczow, then Poland. He came to the US in 1949 and has long been at Cornell, active as a theoretical chemist. In chemistry, he has taught his colleagues how to think about electrons influencing structure and reactivity, and won most of the honours of his profession. Hoffmann is also a writer, carving out his own land between poetry, philosophy, and science. He has published six books of non-fiction, three plays, and six volumes of poetry, including two book-length selections of his poems in Spanish and Russian translations.