World of Chemistry. Ed. by Robyn V. Young. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Gale, 2000. 1360p. AcM free $99 (ISBN 0-7876-3650-0). www.galegroup.com.

The audience for this chemistry reference book is meant to be the general reader with little or no prior knowledge of chemistry and high school students needing information for classroom assignments. It contains twelve hundred entries, arranged alphabetically, covering chemical topics, discoveries, and theories as well as many biographies of historical and contemporary chemists. The entries range in length from two hundred to two thousand words and are unsigned. The book includes a bibliography of sources consulted, a chronology of significant events in chemistry spanning the period from prehistory to 1998 and a subject index.

The biographies profile a number of little-known figures who have made significant contributions to the...