The Nature of Biochemistry [antikvár]

PREFACE If it is true that a good wine needs no bush, it may be similarly true that a good book needs no preface. I hope that this may be a good book, for it has been written for a specific purpose. It is meant to be read, not studied. Degree courses in biochemistry are now offered in a good many colleges and universities. Year by year many school leavers apply for admission to these courses and yet, in my own experience, few of them start with more than a vague idea of what biochemistry is all about. It is for their enlightenment that this book has been made. Possibly there will be others who would find it a useful stardng-point for further study. I have tried to tell a story that is factually accurate with a minimum of oversimplification. If some passages are a little difficult to follow —and biochemistry is an intricate subject—I hope the fascination of the story will lighten the reader's task. It has been difficult to decide what to include and what to omit because, in a book of this size, it is possible to skim over only a part of the whole story. It has been my ambition to keep the book small, for size is apt to be inhibitory to the hard-pressed student of today. In these days of over-early specialization in the schools I have no wish to add to the burden; that is why the book has been written for reading rather than study. It is not intended in any sense to be a supplementary or complementary treatise. I should like to thank the many friends and colleagues who have given me valuable comment, suggestions and criticism, and special thanks go to Mrs Joan Rosemeyer for preparing the diagrams, and to Mrs P. H. Clarke, whose advice and opinion have been unstintingly E. B. london July 1961 IX