This book examines the history and fundamentals of the physical organic chemistry discipline. With the recent flowering of the organic synthesis field, physical organic chemistry has seemed to be shrinking or perhaps is just being absorbed into the toolkit of the synthetic chemist. The only Nobel Prize that can be reasonably attributed to a physical organic chemist is the 1994 award to George Olah, although Jeffrey I. Seeman has recently made a strong case that R. B. Woodward was actually a physical organic chemist in disguise (I).

2014 saw the awarding of the 50th James Flack Norris Award in Physical Organic Chemistry. James Flack Norris was an early physical organic chemist, before the discipline received its name. This book provides insight into the fundamentals of the field, and each chapter is devoted to a major discovery or to noted physical organic chemists, including Paul Schleyer, William Doering, and Glen A. Russell.