New textbooks at all levels of chemistry appear with great regularity.
So me fields such as basic biochemistry, organic reaction mechanisms,
weIl represented by many excellent and chemical thermodynamics are
texts, and new or revised editions are published sufficiently often to
keep up with progress in research. However, some areas of chemistry,
especially many of those taught at the graduate level, suffer from areal
lack of up-to-date textbooks. The most serious needs occur in fields
that are rapidly changing. Textbooks in these subjects usually have to
be written by scientists actually involved in the research that is
advancing the field. It is not often easy to persuade such individuals
to set time aside to help spread the knowledge they have accumulated.
Our goal, in this series, is to pinpoint areas of chemistry where recent
progress has outpaced what is covered in any available textbooks, and
then seek out and per suade experts in these fields to produce
relatively concise but instructive introductions to their fields. These
should serve the needs of one semester or one quarter graduate courses
in chemistry and biochem- istry. In some cases the availability of texts
in active research areas should help stimulate the creation of new
courses. Charles R. Cantor vii Preface to the Third Edition It was over
100 years ago that Emil Fischer postulated his ingenious "lock-and-key"
principle, whieh was subsequently applied to the devel- opment of a
modern theory of enzyme catalysis.