Cutting-edge history
Rewriting the textbooks is our duty, because credit and recognition are much more than a reward for the individual. We use them to show what we value, and what matters to us – what lies behind us to be discovered is just as important as what lies ahead
We often write about ‘rewriting the textbooks’ in Chemistry World – it’s a well-worn trope of science news stories. We use it so often because it is so often useful – it shows how science continues to build and how our understanding changes as our knowledge improves. And it’s as true for the history of science as it is for science itself.
Our feature on June Sutor details how her work in the 1960s uncovered crystallographic evidence for C–H⋯O hydrogen bonds. The idea that hydrogen atoms bonded to carbon could behave this way was greeted with scepticism and Sutor’s proposal gained some influential opponents, which seldom bodes well for a new idea. To bastardise Arthur Eddington’s rule: if your theory contradicts a prominent scientist, I can give you no hope