BIOCHEMISTRY

Chemistry of carbohydrates

Sixteen years in retirement have not dimmed my interest in science, particularly the chemistry of the sugars. For the first eight years I kept in touch by continuing my ongoing service as an editor of "Carbohydrate Research", then the publishers decided that superannuated editors were not what the journal really needed. Anyway, ten years in an editor's chair is enough for anybody! More recently I've been engaged in mentoring some undergraduate research students in Chemistry. The impetus for their project was Prof. B. Shakhashiri's curiosity about the chemistry of one of his lecture demonstrations, the 'Blue Bottle Experiment'. Sugars are involved. We hope to illuminate the details of the blue bottle reaction, and in addition, with the availablilty of modern tools such as rapid scanning UV-visible spectrophotometers we believe we will be able to produce some results of general significance in sugar chemistry. Undergraduates in any major who are eligible to register for Chemistry 299 or 699 (Directed Study) are candidates for participation in this research.