That a part of the beauty of a chemistry experiment can lie with the product distinguishes chemistry from some of the other sciences, for physics, biology and geology are less often concerned with producing an artefact. So it’s not particularly meaningful to regard symmetrical, ’beautiful’ molecules as objets d’art, although they surely do have about them an ’artistry’ that is connected to the older idea of art as techne, a skill in fabrication. But Plato’s idea of beauty was never a part of any theory of art, and in fact he spoke disapprovingly of the ’deceptiveness’ of painting and sculpture. It is tempting - and chemists often fall for this temptation - to conflate Platonic beauty with an artistic aesthetic. This notion was advanced by Plato in his book Timaeus, and it articulated his feeling that beauty in nature is connected to orderliness and regularity. The criterion of ’beauty’ applied by chemists to the molecules they make is indeed of a Platonic nature: it typically identifies beauty in a high degree of symmetry.

A sense of Platonic beauty was what motivated many chemists (including Woodward) to try to make the polyhedral hydrocarbon dodecahedrane (C 20H 20), a challenge that Leo Paquette at Ohio State University, US, first conquered in 1980. The master of organic synthesis Robert Woodward had a clear appreciation of ’molecular beauty’, and his daughter Crystal felt that ’the delight and aesthetic pleasure’ he took from his products ’contributed to his skill’. The football-shaped carbon cluster C 60 has been called ’the most beautiful molecule’ on account of its delightful symmetry. One thing that does set chemists talking about beauty is molecules. Can we call a chemistry experiment ’beautiful’? Chemists evidently think so but what exactly do they mean by it? And which are then the most beautiful experiments of all?

Molecules by Philip Ball