Altered State: Book Recommendations with Sarah Stoll

Chemistry Professor Sarah Stoll is transforming the tiniest structures into big discoveries. As the principal investigator of the Stoll Research Group, she leads undergraduate and graduate students in better understanding magnetic nanoparticles, leading to advances in everything from targeted MRI contrast agents that are safer for individuals with kidney complications to new ways of storing and manipulating magnetic data. It has garnered her everything from a National Science Foundation CAREER Award — which recognizes exceptional potential in early-career faculty members — to being named a Sonneborn Chair for Interdisciplinary Collaboration at Georgetown. Here, she shares some of the books found in her office in Regents Hall that shaped her identity, calling and worldview.

What is a book that everyone should read?

Susan Solomon’s Solvable, which provides the history of six environmental challenges. At a time where there is so much “outrage fatigue,” this book has the urgency but not the alarm of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. It is optimistic, identifies successes and is perfect for anyone who asks, “How did we get here, and how can we solve something as big as climate change?”

What is a book that inspired your academic journey?

I was a first-year student when I read Primo Levi’s The Periodic Table. It was significant in that it marked the moment that I knew being a chemist was part of my identity. Chemistry was the lens through which I learned about the world.

What is the best book you’ve read in the past year?

It’d either be Alan Alda’s If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face? or Andrew Solomon’s Far from the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity. The former is a great book about science communication and as someone who spends time carefully selecting my words, it made me pause to consider the role of nonverbal communication. The latter is a nonscientific text that expanded my understanding of what it means to be human.

What is a book you revisit every year?

I frequently return to The Second Law by Henry Bent. In addition to the importance that entropy has to chemistry and the environment, each chapter has a short history of an important scientist who contributed to thermodynamics, often in their own words, allowing Bent to not only humanize an abstract subject but unveil the observations and theories that over time form the cathedral we call thermodynamics.

#SHELFIE