On the Surface of Things: Images of the Extraordinary in Science

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Summary: From Science:
Review: "In this wondrous book, the artist Felice Frankel and the chemist George Whitesides meld photography and science to create poetry, of both the visual and literary sort. A series of spectacular photographs . . . are paired with descriptions that capture both the science and the beauty of the images."

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Summary: From Nature:
Review: "On reading this book one gets the immediate feeling that one's eye and mind have truly feasted, that one holds in one's hands an obvious classic at the nexus of art and science. . . .Felice Frankel is an internationally recognized photographer. . . .George Whitesides is an outstanding chemist, versatile in the extreme, as savvy to the applied as he is to the pure."

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Summary: From the Journal of Chemical Education:
Review: "On the Surface of Things is a wonder-book, in the best tradition of image and text working together to lead us to admire, puzzle, and learn. . . .This is a book to relish and then to pass on to friends and teenage children who wonder what scientists do and why they do it."

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Summary: From The New Yorker:
Review: "Stunning."

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Summary: From The Christian Science Monitor:
Review: "The book combines poetic text by Whitesides with photographs from Frankel that are reminiscent of paintings by Georgia O'Keefe to Dutch artist Piet Mondrian."

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Summary: From New Scientist:
Review: "The book will excite scientific minds and leave artistic ones in awe."

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Summary: From The San Jose Mercury News:
Review: "The views are like nothing you have seen before. You need neither background nor even interest in science to admire the celestial patterns of a self-assembled plastic microstructure, the ordered renderings of crystal nucleation, the bust of colors in a security label hologram, the mesmerizing swirls of an electron micrograph, or the understated beauty of a colony of yeast. But if these lovely images make you yearn for explanations, Whitesides is a good guide."

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Summary: From Scientific American:
Review: "The words [in On the Surface of Things] are no less remarkable [than the photos], balancing weighty concepts from the laboratory with a literate tone as light and elegant as a spider's web. A wonderful achievement indeed."

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Summary: From Science News:
Review: "This combined effort is a visual extravaganza that melds stunning macroscopic and stereomicroscopic photography of surfaces such as ferrofluid, ice crystals, and marble columns colored with lichen with intriguing text describing the scientific principles illustrated."

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Summary: From Newsweek:
Review: "What's remarkable, especially since they haven't watered down the science, is how accessible the book is. . . .We tend to think of surfaces as superficial, but for scientists surfaces are where things happen. Frankel shows us how beautiful those surfaces can be; Whitesides, how revelatory."