In Our Own Image: Personal Symmetry in Discovery.

Istvan Hargittai ([email protected], Budapest Technical University, Hungary)
and Magdolna Hargittai (Hungary).
Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers: New York. February 2000, Hardbound. 242 pp. EUR 52.50 / USD 49.95 / GBP 34. ISBN 0-306-46091-2

Shu-Kun Lin

Molecular Diversity Preservation International (MDPI), Saengergasse 25, CH-4054 Basel, Switzerland
Tel.: +41 79 322 3379, Fax: +41 61 302 8918, E-mail: [email protected], URL: http://www.mdpi.org/lin/

Received: 1 December 2001 / Published: 20 December 2001

I gave lectures entitled "Ugly Symmetry" at several conferences and many institutes during past six years. Obviously the Hargittai couple share more or less the same opinion with me. Therefore, it is my pleasure to read this interesting book In Our Own Image: Personal Symmetry in Discovery [2,3].

I have communicated with the first author, Istvan Hargittai, many times and bothered him with my papers on the relationship of symmetry and thermodynamics. The first time was in 1989 when my paper [4] was submitted to Hargittai's journal Symmetry, which was scheduled for publication in its issue 4. Unfortunately the publisher VCH canceled the publication of the journal Symmetry after the publication of the first issue. My paper was finally published in another journal following Istvan's kind recommendation [4]. My most recent manuscript was reviewed by Istvan in 1999 when it was first submitted to Prof. Dr. Jerzy Leszczynski, the Editor-in-Chief of International Journal of Molecular Sciences. It is also related to the idea of "ugly symmetry". In the final version of the paper [5], I cited this book.

References and Notes

1. Editor's Note: The brief summary and the contents of the books are reported as provided by the author or the publishers.
   Authors and publishers are encouraged to send review copies of their recent books of potential interest to readers of Entropy to the Editor-in-Chief
   (Dr. Shu-Kun Lin, MDPI, Saengergasse 25, CH-4054 Basel, Switzerland. Tel. +41 79 322 3379, Fax +41 61 302 8918, E-mail: [email protected]). Some books will be offered to the scholarly community for the purpose of preparing full-length reviews.
2. The URL for the book is http://www.wkap.nl/prod/b/0-306-46091-2
3. The website for the biography of the author is http://www.symmetry.org/people/
4. Lin, S.-K. Time Symmetry and Thermodynamics. Comp. Math. Applic. Int'l. J. 1991, 22 (12), 67-76.
5. Lin, S.-K. The Nature of the Chemical Process. 1. Symmetry Evolution - Revised Information Theory, Similarity Principle and ugly Symmetry. Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2001, 2, 10-39 (downloadable at http://www.mdpi.org/lin/lin-rpu.htm).