Excuse Me Sir, Would You Like to Buy a Kilo of Isopropyl Bromide?: Max Gergel: Amazon.com: Books

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Excuse Me Sir, Would You Like to Buy a Kilo of Isopropyl Bromide? Hardcover – January 1, 1979

by Max Gergel (Author)

4.8 4 ratings

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Print length

193 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Pierce Chemical Company
Publication date

January 1, 1979
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Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B000I3Z28Y
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Pierce Chemical Company; y First edition (January 1, 1979)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 193 pages
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.08 pounds

Best Sellers Rank: #4,735,293 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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4.8 4 ratings

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William Clodius

Humorous memoirs of a chemical engineer/businessman

Reviewed in the United States on October 11, 2010

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This book is in many ways reminiscent of the memoirs of Richard Feynman, in that they are often humorous memoirs of a Jewish American scientist who comes of age during the second world war and becomes involved in the Manhattan project, and much of the humor revolves around science, sex and romance. Max Gergel was a couple of years younger than Feynman, from a poorer southern family and his trajectory followed a very different path.

Max attended one State University earning his bachelors. Almost from the beginning Max was focused on starting his own chemical company. He started one for the university while still a student, then started a new one with his step-father and uncle while filling in for drafted professors and also teaching future pilots. This company eventually became a supplier to the scientists of the Manhattan project. While he was sometimes mistaken for a professor, the war and the need to pay his way prevented him from earning an advanced degree.

The book is divided in two parts: the first covers the "academic" period of his life from early high school in the mid 1930s through to the end of the war when his association with the university came to an end. The second deals with his experience with his business. I get the impression that the stories were written down as one significant event prompted memories of other events however distantly related, and the author or his editor then started to put them in largely chronological order, but ran out of patience or time about half way through the discussion of his business years.

Among other things one will discover: that it is not a good idea to wrap potassium in a handkerchief and put it in a pocket, that antisemetism was a problem during much of the war, that mercaptans will evacuate large academic buildings, that there are a number of compounds whose production should have poisoned Max but didn't, however one almost killed him and largely ended his work as a practicing chemist, that not being in uniform during a war makes courting difficult, having a pacifist for a partner makes business difficult during a war, that a company under financial pressure will take chances with its employees even its chief scientist and manager, that is is very easy to create a hazardous waste site, and that even under financial duress there were chemicals Max would not make.

5 people found this helpful

Peter S. Shenkin

It's "the way we were" for chemists over 60

Reviewed in the United States on June 4, 2011

Verified Purchase

When I was an undergraduate in the early 1960s, I did research in an organic chemistry lab. (Actually, I had gotten started a few years earlier, in high school.) I'm old enough to remember the end of the era that Gergel writes about. We would perform 100-gram reactions even in undergraduate courses; benzene was a common solvent, sitting in the lab in gallon+ quantities; part of the training of every chemist was to learn respect for dangerous compounds -- explosive, carcinogenic, air-sensitive -- by handling them personally, often in large quantities.

In contrast to today, pharmaceuticals, computation and the latest in academic research were way, way back in the mind of the typical working chemist, compared to industrial chemicals -- as a visit to an old copy of C&E News would reveal. A typical back-cover ad might feature a babe in hot pants poised provocatively upon a 55-gallon drum of the solvent or industrial-grade starting material being advertised. At ACS meetings, similarly attired babes handed out literature and lured customers into the booths of the chemical companies at the Expo.

It was the wild West, or the wild South, in Gergel's case. Production and working conditions were for the most part unregulated, and the Gergels of the world were able to start companies and succeed or starve without much interference by anyone. Gergel did both, and had an exuberant time along the way -- though his book reminds us that the lows were as low as the highs were high. We're indebted to him for this book, which for some of us is a reminder and, for those younger than we, perhaps a revelation of a time when everything was freer, wilder and less encumbered, if not better in all regards.

6 people found this helpful

worth reading for chemists and chemical engineers, and perhaps others

Reviewed in the United States on October 19, 2010

Max Gergel was a talented chemist who founded and ran the Columbia Organic Chemicals company for decades, despite never receiving a higher degree in chemistry. He was an effective and funny salesperson, and many in the industry from the 1940s through the 1970s dealt with him in one capacity or another. In the 1960s and 1970s, the ACS flew him around the country to speak to college students, recognizing that his funny, sometimes profane stories would humanize the profession and might help young chemists decide to stay in the field. Thus he touched several generations of chemists, even though he was never a professor.

This book covers Gergel's childhood, education, and the first half of his career. Sex (or his inability to get any) is a recurring theme, as are the awkwardness of being a civilian in an army town in 1944, anti-semitism in the south, and the various ways chemists rip each other off. Every chapter is laced with chemical synthesis, so for example he might describe a failed date, and then his method of synthesizing n-Dodecyl bromide with no residual alcohol.

Gergel's sharp memory is touching; he lists the names of students who passed through the almost countless courses he taught in the Navy flight school during WWII, then lists which of his students had died in the war (and in which battles), and which had gone on to be doctors, or vice presidents at industrial companies, or professors.

His personal motto seems to be sic fret crustulum - That's How the Cookie Crumbles

These memoirs provide windows into aspects of the home front not often talked about. Mothers would call the draft board to ask why their sons had to go to war but not Gergel. It was so awkward being out of the military that he and his fellow naval flight school academic instructors devised fake uniforms for themselves, even buying WWI medals from thrift stores declaring they had fought in the Battle of Jutland (there may be some exaggeration here). He learned to fly and described wounds from lab accidents as coming from flight accidents to impress his students.

Later, he talks about hiring a local bootlegger as a lab assistant, whose vast experience with novel techniques of distillation allowed Columbia Organic to hit deadlines that would otherwise have been impossible.

The stories are funny and interesting, but I am not sure there is any deeper value here for young chemists or business people. Gergel's success seems most due to having launched a chemical company in 1944, able to meet the military's demands during the war, and the demands of a booming economy in the 1950s and thereafter. The lack of environmental regulations helped; he cheerfully describes the convenience of his first office's location next to a stream in which he could dump his waste chemicals. How much of this would be relevant in today's economy?

9 people found this helpful

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