The Bluffer's Guide to Science: Bluff Your Way in Science

A snappy little book containing facts, jargon, and inside information--all that readers need to know to hold their own among the experts.

Brian Malpass was born in Stoke-on-Trent, but then so were R.J. (Spitfire) Mitchell, Arnold Bennett and Stanley Matthews and it never did them any harm. He now lives in Marlow.

After spending a large chunk of his childhood in an involuntary study of the tuberculosis bacillus, he wound up at Birmingham University with a First in Chemistry and a Doctorate. When asked what he wrote his thesis on, he replies truthfully, 'Fag packets mostly'.

The actual subject was the use of radio-tracers in the study of free-radical and anionic polymerisation of substituted acrylates and their interpretation in terms of polar effects, steric hindrance and resonance stabilisation. And after all these years he can still say that even with several glasses of his favourite claret taken.

He did in fact make a living as a polymer chemist before drifting into surface science and thence into the management of science and technology. After that, by a series of unplanned sideways and upward lurches, he staggered into finance and ultimately general management of a large public company.

He now seems to have embarked on yet another career as a writer, watched spellbound by his wife, a fellow lapsed chemist, and their two grown-up daughters - who have turned out remarkably well in the circumstances.