Peter Atkins: ‘Rather than a single author book with an author’s voice, it’s becoming more of a committee construction’
By 
Mason Wakley2026-07-01T05:30:00
The author of the venerable Physical Chemistry on how writing chemistry textbooks has changed over his career
Which textbooks have you written?
The first textbook that I wrote was Molecular Quantum Mechanics, which was published in 1970. Physical Chemistry came along in 1978 and its now in its 12th edition. I’ve worked on various other textbooks. They span from the hard left – the physical chemistry aspects of biology – to the hard right quantum mechanics.