ABSTRACT
Writing a long report can be a daunting task at the outset. Many topics have advanced in a series of fits and starts, and big advances have often resulted from advances in seemingly unrelated areas of chemistry, or even in other disciplines. The development of flash photolysis as a means of studying fast reactions owed much to Lord Porter’s experience in radar in World War II. Low concentrations of peroxides in organic solvents can also destroy many homogeneous transition metal catalysts. The sentence ‘N,N-diethyl-1,4-diaminobenzene was prepared according to directions given in the literature, can easily be modified to cover most eventualities. The Harvard system is seldom encountered in the chemical literature and its use is strongly discouraged. Many students are seduced by what a postgraduate student called the ‘spurious authenticity of the printed page’ when he saw his first article in print.
