Like Rodney Dangerfield, the ACS History of Chemistry Division "don't get no respect". The division's talks are typically scheduled for a small room on the periphery of the real science. But at the recent San Francisco ACS meeting, the April 7 talks of the division were crowded beyond belief. Every seat in the small room was taken! People were sitting on the floor in front of the first row chairs. The sides of the room were crowded with standees. The crowd spilled from the room out into the corridor. Halfway through the morning session, the ACS staff tumbled to the situation and moved the session to a room double the size, although the new room still was filled. The cause of the History of Chemistry deluge was the symposium "Chemistry and Science Fiction". Organizer Jack Stocker set the tone by wearing plastic antennae reminiscent of the alien in the Star Trek episode "Journal to Babel". Indeed, Natalie Foster gave a rousing talk on "Chemistry in Star Trek". But Ben Chastain struck a poignant note in the second talk. He dedicated his talk in memory of its subject, Isaac Asimov, who had died the day before.

Where will science ever get another interpreter to compare with Isaac Asimov? It was he and Ray Bradbury who excited my interest in science fiction. I loved the early novels, the Foundation trilogy, Pebble in the Sky, The End of Eternity, The Caves of Steel, and The Naked Sun. Later my tastes turned away from fiction, with the exception of fantasy, but Asimov still fed my new tastes. He was unparalleled at making difficult concepts understandable. My colleague Cleta Rackers said that she picked up Asimov's book Building Blocks of the Universe one day when there was nothing on the science fiction shelf of her library to interest her. Reading that book caused her to decide to become a chemist. Like Cleta, I was fascinated with Asimov's non-fictional books on science. In the December Retort I wrote an article on "Ytterbium Meets Peterson-Berger" about my visit to the Ytterby mine, the site of the discovery of a number of the rare earth elements. The reason I knew about the mine was an Asimov article on the rare earths. Before writing my article, I wanted to refresh my memory by rereading Asimov's article. I couldn't remember the title of the book, so I went to the library computer terminal and called up Asimov. Big mistake! There appeared hundreds of titles (the man wrote at least 468 with probably more books in press) and I couldn't possible figure out which one I was looking for. Instead I read the chapter on rare earths in Maria Weeks' book The Discovery of the Elements. But what Asimov had made exciting yet simple Weeks made complex and dull.

Isaac Asimov was born in 1920 in Petrovichi in what had been known as Great Russia. His mother's half brother had immigrated to the USA and issued an invitation to Asimov's family to join him there. They arrived in New York in 1923. Young Isaac taught himself to read before he was 5 and graduated from high school at the age of 15. He entered Columbia as a premed, but switched to a chemistry major from a biology major after his sophomore year. He had very little enthusiasm for medical school and only applied to those in New York City. When he wasn't accepted in medical school after graduating from Columbia in 1939, he went on to graduate school in chemistry at Columbia. He received a master's degree in 1941. During those college years, however, he was trying to write science fiction short stories. Thanks to the remarkable editor John Campbell, his fledging efforts soon improved. It was Campbell who on March 17, 1941 caused Asimov to write his most famous story. He read Isaac the Emerson quote, "If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God." He asked Asimov what would happen if the stars only would appear every thousand years. Asimov said that he didn't know. Campbell said, "I think men would go mad. Now go home and write the story."

During the war Asimov first worked at the Philadelphia Naval Yard and then served in the Army. He went back to Columbia, obtaining his Ph.D. in chemistry. Following graduation, he secured a teaching position at the Boston University Medical School. All this time he continued to write science fiction.

Most readers of science fiction would agree that chemistry doesn't usually play a big part in science fiction. Biology and physics are the favorite sciences there. Asimov was no exception, but chemistry did occur in his fiction on occasion. He wrote a leg-pull on "The Endochonic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline" for Astounding Science Fiction. This was a substance that supposedly dissolved before it even hit a solvent, and the idea came from Asimov's research utilizing catechol. The story "Pate do foie gras" concerned a goose that really did lay golden eggs, with a plausible chemical explanation. The poisonous qualities of beryllium played a part in another science fiction story. Asimov's best known story, however, that uses chemistry is undoubtedly "The Gods Themselves." Supposedly, Asimov's fellow science fiction writer Robert Silverberg mentioned plutonium 186 in a conversation with Asimov. Asimov told Silverberg that there never could be such an isotope as plutonium 186, but that Asimov was nevertheless going to write a story about it. The mysterious transformation of tungsten 186 to plutonium 186 in Dr. Hallam's laboratory was the basis of Asimov's first science fiction novel in 15 years.

Chemistry, of course, is much more at home in mystery stories, and Asimov also wrote mystery stories. In the novel "A Whiff of Death" an unpopular graduate student is killed when someone substitutes sodium cyanide for sodium acetate in a mixture to be acidified. The story "What's in a Name?" turns on a twist that chemists can well appreciate. An employee in a chemistry library in which a murder has occurred is caught lying. She says she couldn't remember the name of a German visitor to the library who had talked to her. The visitor's name? Beilstein!

After 1954 Asimov started concentrating on the non-fiction works that made him so famous, although he always kept his hand in science fiction. He wrote two huge volumes of autobiography: "In Memory Yet Green" and "In Joy Still Felt." He promised a third, and it may be lurking on a floppy disc in his office somewhere. Asimov filled a unique niche. In an age of anti-science we need science interpreters more than ever. I can be replaced. You can be replaced. I don't think Isaac Asimov can ever be replaced.