Chemistry's Tongue

The work

AuthorsPeter Atkins
Editors
Typearticle
Year1989
Also known asatkins1989article
Citekeyatkins1989chemistry

Where it appeared

Published inInterdisciplinary Science Reviews
PublisherTaylor & Francis
Volume14
Issue2
Pages133--137

Settled

AbstractNo abstract: the piece opens straight into its own prose, and it is a COMMENT rather than a research paper. Leaf 1 of the copy is a Taylor and Francis cover sheet ('To cite this article... Published online: 18 Jul 2013'); leaf 2, where starts_on correctly points, is the article's first page. It runs the title 'Chemistry's Tongue', the byline 'PETER ATKINS / Lincoln College, Oxford University, England', the department label 'COMMENT' in the top corner, and then the first paragraph of the essay: 'Many are put off by scientists' gaunt, ungainly adoptions and fear the words that seem to guard the gates of understanding...'. That paragraph is the beginning of the argument, not a summary of it -- it introduces the metaphor of words as tigers that the piece then develops. Interdisciplinary Science Reviews prints no abstract for this department. Established by reading leaf 2.

A copy is held

pdf, 426.5 kB. Not published — it may be under copyright. The facts and links here are.

How it got here

How it got hereimport via bibtex
Added2026-08-04 00:00 UTC
Approved bya person 2026-08-07 14:39 UTC

Cite it as

@article{atkins1989chemistry,
  title        = {Chemistry's Tongue},
  author       = {Peter Atkins},
  year         = {1989},
  journal      = {Interdisciplinary Science Reviews},
  publisher    = {Taylor \& Francis},
  volume       = {14},
  number       = {2},
  pages        = {133--137},
  doi          = {10.1179/isr.1989.14.2.133},
}

This record lives at https://refs.drheap.org/atkins1989chemistry/ and will keep doing so. It used to be called atkins1989article, and those addresses still resolve to this one.