Last Wednesday, July 21, I got a notification from ORCID, an organization that assigns academic authors a code so that their works can be easily identified and compiled: something on my page had been updated. I looked at my profile to find that Astrochemistry, the book I wrote for the American Chemical Society’s In Focus series, had been published!

Astrochemistry is an e-book that has interviews with astrochemists spanning a range of research areas, and it has videos of different concepts integrated throughout. In addition to writing the text, I also did a lot of the illustrations myself, including the cover.

I got to write the description of the book:

The answers to some of the most fundamental questions in science lie between the stars, in molecular clouds that serve as celestial laboratories. Disentangling the chemistries in extraterrestrial environments can provide clues about how planets form and shed light on problems in terrestrial chemistry that are difficult to investigate in the lab, and the origins of life.

Astrochemistry takes you on a tour of the molecular universe through time and space, starting with the emergence of matter about 13.8 billion years ago. From there, the tour visits the interstellar medium, with an emphasis on molecular clouds where stars are born. It then goes through different evolutionary stages of stars and planets - and the chemistry that emerges alongside them - before ending in our own solar system, where you will learn about chemical delivery by objects such as comets and meteorites.

You can find out more about the book on the ACS In Focus website.

Of course, there are many people who helped to make this happen. My research advisor, Geoff Blake was a mentor through this project and is listed as my co-author. As I wrote the text, he had helpful discussions with me about organization, what topics to include, and which might be best left out of this introductory volume.

Dr. Donna Wrublewski, friend and Caltech librarian, believed in this project before it was even a project. I reached out to Donna a few years ago to talk about an idea I had for writing and illustrating a book. She bought me sushi and connected me with the ACS Publications team. This truly would not have been possible without her.

The ACS editorial team was amazing. Jane Findley, Dr. Nate Jung, Jenny Stout, Ali Kreckman, and Sara Tenney were fantastic guides, and people, throughout this journey. Extra shout-out to Nate for chatting with me after about his journey into teaching technical writing and freelance editing.

Drs. Ilse Cleeves, Kyle Crabtree, Murthy Gudipati, Karin Öberg, and Ewine van Dishoeck graciously agreed to answer questions and provide interviews.

My artwork wouldn’t be possible without the ongoing support and encouragement of many people, especially Space Enthusiast Richard Hendricks, Dr. Veronica Allen, Sheila Kulkarni, Hannah Toru, Alexia Alexander Wight, Beth Thibodeau, and Izzy Muise.

Shoutout to friends and colleagues at Caltech for providing preliminary feedback and their expertise on various topics, especially Cam Buzard, Dr. Joey Messinger, and Sadie Dutton.

Finally, thank you so, so much to my husband and partner Alex for reading my drafts and providing feedback on my illustrations, and for helping me stay calm when Word crashed and I thought I lost 120 pages of work because the document was corrupted by Word’s freakout. (Thankfully, I was able to recover a slightly outdated version of that document.)

I hope you will check out the book. It is intended for a chemistry undergrad or new graduate student, or just anyone with a chemistry background who wants to learn more about astrochemistry. If that’s not you, there are plenty of non-technical bits, specifically in the introduction, and I tried to sprinkle stories throughout. I’d be happy to make reading recommendations or explain anything that doesn’t make sense :)

Finally, if you are interested in the artwork I did for the book, I have some of it plastered on postcards, which you can purchase in my online shop.

Thank you for your support, and I hope you enjoy Astrochemistry as much as I enjoyed writing it!