The Penguin Dictionary of Science

About this book

The Penguin Dictionary of Science covers all the important topics in this key subject area, including chemistry, physics, molecular biology, biochemistry, human anatomy, mathematics, astronomy and computing. Superbly comprehensive and accessible, this dictionary is the ideal reference tool for anyone who needs to understand scientific terms, whether student, researcher or enthusiastic layperson. This title provides clear definitions of some 7,000 scientific terms; gives succinct explanations of fundamental terms (ammonia, base pairing, cell) and more specialist concepts (allosteric enzyme, Bravais lattice, close packing); covers individual elements and chemical compounds in detail; contains appendices ranging from lists of SI units and fundamental constants to the periodic table and an outline classification of living organisms; and, includes hundreds of illustrations and diagrams.

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Biography

Michael Clugston was born in Lurgan, Northern Ireland, in 1950 and educated at Epsom College and Wadham College, Oxford, where he was the Major Scholar in Chemistry in 1969. During the four-year Chemistry course he won university prizes both for Finals and for research done during the fourth year. He then stayed on for another two years to research for a D.Phil. in theoretical chemistry, under the guidance of Peter Atkins. He spent a year as a Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard before returning to the UK to get married. He held an SRC Fellowship at Cambridge, as well as a Research Fellowship at St Edmund's College, Cambridge. In 1978 he went into full-time school mastering at Tonbridge School, where he has been ever since. He has published textbooks for the Advanced-level market, Principles of Physical Chemistry and Chemistry: Principles and Applications (with Peter Atkins), as well as several sets of computer programs. With the huge changes that have occurred at Advanced level, he has written a completely new textbook, Advanced Chemistry, which was published in 2000 by Oxford University Press. He was shortlisted for the Salters Prize for Chemistry teachers in the same year.