In Our Own Image: Personal Symmetry in Discovery.

I gave lectures entitled “Ugly Symmetry” at several conferences and many institutes during past six years. Obviously the Hargittai couple share more or less the same opinion with me. Therefore, it is my pleasure to read this interesting book In Our Own Image: Personal Symmetry in Discovery [2,3].

I have communicated with the first author, Istvan Hargittai, many times and bothered him with my papers on the relationship of symmetry and thermodynamics. The first time was in 1989 when my paper [4] was submitted to Hargittai’s journal Symmetry, which was scheduled for publication in its issue 4. Unfortunately the publisher VCH canceled the publication of the journal Symmetry after the publication of the first issue. My paper was finally published in another journal following Istvan’s kind recommendation [4]. My most recent manuscript was reviewed by Istvan in 1999 when it was first submitted to Prof. Dr. Jerzy Leszczynski, the Editor-in-Chief of International Journal of Molecular Sciences. It is also related to the idea of “ugly symmetry”. In the final version of the paper [5], I cited this book.