Books and Software: Getting the basics of NMR - Analytical Chemistry

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Books

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Software

Getting the Basics of NMR

A Complete Introduction to Modern NMR Spectroscopy Roger S. Macomber John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 605 Third Ave. New York, NY 10158 1998, 382 pp., $49.95

For all of us who use NMR in research and need to initiate newcomers on how it works, what it is good for, the extent of its capabilities, and where one needs to exercise caution in choosing instrumental parameters, there is a problem as to what book to prescribe for authoritative but readable information. Almost 40 years ago, I wrote a small book for that purpose during an era in which the instrumentation was so simple that there was not a lot to say about how it worked. As a result, I could concentrate mostly on applications of NMR to chemistry. In retrospect, the most noteworthy feature of that book, besides its colorful diagrams, was probably its introduction of exercisestfiatinvited readers to use SDectra and molecular formulas to deduce structures That age of simple innocence about the complexities of shifts, couplings, reactionrate effects, and relaxation began to disappear almost immediately—indeed, in the same year as the publication of Pople, Schneider, and Bernstein's thorough and authoritative, but rather difficult, work. Nevertheless, undergraduate chemistry students are usually taught rudiments of my kind of NMR in their organic chemis52 A

try courses, but what they learn is hardly sufficient for modern research. So to fill the resulting information gap, scores of books have been written, along with an eight-volume Encyclopedia of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance. These works span an incredible range of sophistication in terms of how they treat mathematics and physical theory. Macomber has tried to step into an important intermediate territory where, for the most part, the spectrometer can be regarded essentially as a black box and the underlying, increasingly complex, quantum theory, used in what Ray Freeman aptly calls "spin choreography", is pretty much taken for granted. The result is a helpful paperback for those who need to learn NMR for their research. Topics include how to interpret the results from the elaborate, but now almost routine, pulse sequences that give useful 2-D structural information. Macomber's book contains many excellent illustrative spectra and thought-provoking problems. The basic topics relating to chemical shifts, coupling constants, and relaxation and rate effects are usually taken to just that level of sophistication at which the fog of quantum theory starts to make explanations—in terms of nuclear-vector models—essentially impossible. The organization is quite logical and the narrative rather chatty. The book culminates with short, "orienting" chapters on solid-state NMR and NMR imaging Although titled as a "complete introduction" to NMR a few basic topics are omitted most notably liquid-crystal and gas-phase NMR Because of the chosen scope as an introduction the book does not cover such topics as the Bloch equations multiple-quantum coherences density-matrix calculations or product operators I found only one serious error, where it is stated that AA'X spin systems should behave like A2X and thus would give de-

Analytical Chemistry News & Features, January 1, 1999

ceptively simple spectra. Not so. The same argument would suggesttiiatAA'XX' behaves like A2X2 and for that there are many contrary examples. Within its stated scope and purpose, however, I think this is an excellent book. Reviewed by John D. Roberts, California Institite of Technology

A Tool for Understanding GFAAS

A Practical Guide to Graphite Furnace Atomic Absorption Spectrometry David J. Buther and Joseph Sneddon John Wiley & Sons 605 Third Ave. New York, NY 10158 1998, 241 pp., $69.95

This monograph is volume 149 in Chemical Analysis: A Series ofMonographs on Analytical Chemistry and Its Applications, edited by J. D. Winefordner. It addresses nearly every aspect of the use of a graphite furnace atomizer for atomic absorption (GFAAS) measurements. The authors do not claim this to be a comprehensive handbook for the analysis of every sample but as a tool for the understanding and development of such methodologies. It is the opinion of this reviewertiiatthey have achieved that goal.