I first wrote about the pioneering work of Prasanna de Silva – AP to his friends and colleagues – back in the early 1990s in publications such as New Scientist, Science and others. It really was pioneering, he and his team at Queen’s University Belfast were starting to find ways to build molecules, that could substitute for the logic functions usually the preserve of silicon chips. They created molecular logic units for the Boolean operators – the AND, OR, NAND, NOR, XOR, INHIBIT etc etc.
From the book description: “We all learn – in schools, factories, bars and streets. We gather, store, process and transmit information in society. Molecular systems involved in our senses and within our brains allow all this to happen and molecular systems allow living things of all kinds to handle information for the purpose of survival and growth. Nevertheless, the vital link between molecules and computation was not generally appreciated until a few decades ago.”
The field of molecular logic and computation has not yet reached the age of majority but it is growing fast and strong. There is no other book around that can provide the comprehensive background and insights AP offers in this monograph from the RSC.
“This book is an authoritative, state of the art, reference and a ‘one-stop-shop’ concerning the current state of the field for scientists, academics and postgraduate students.”
Molecular Logic-based Computation Monographs in Supramolecular Chemistry: A. Prasanna de Silva.