Another chemist in the headlines is Kristin Bowman-James, professor of chemistry at the University of Kansas. She received two awards in 2002, from the Iota Sigma Pi (national honour society for women in chemistry) and the American Chemical Society 鈥� for encouraging women to enter the discipline. Her reading reflects this: she loves novels with women protagonists or at least women in the main roles, as well as suspense and intrigue, and fast-paced novels, 鈥渆specially if there is some science in them as well鈥�. So she has particularly enjoyed Final Target by Iris Johansen (Macmillan, 2001).
鈥淢ost of the time I only read when travelling,鈥� she admits. On a recent trip back from Oak Ridge, Tennessee, she started James Patterson鈥檚 Second Chance (Little Brown, 2002), another novel in which the women are key players and science is involved. She is finding it 鈥渁bsolutely riveting鈥�: 鈥淚 even had trouble putting it down when we landed.鈥�