SMELL – A Very Short Introduction by Matthew Cobb

 

A Very Short Introduction by Oxford University Press is “a thoroughly good idea” as the TIMES describes it. Since 1995, OUP has published over 650 little volumes in this series, each about 100 pages long, on everything from Abolitionism to Zionism. I have read several and must confess to coming away with the feeling that some of them are bit dry and crammed. But SMELL by Matthew Cobb is delightful—scholarly, informative, witty, anecdotal, and has a personal touch. With chapters on How We Smell; Smelling with Genes; Smell Signals; Smell, Location, and Memory; The Ecology of Smell; Smell in Culture; and Smell of the Future; it is a concise introduction to everything we would want to know about smell, complete with an enticing set of Further Reading and References. I have been toying with the idea of writing one on “The Insect Societies” but have been put off reading some of the other volumes. Now, I am inspired!

Matthews predicts that “In the coming decades smell, for so long overlooked by philosophers, scientists, historians, and indeed by many of us in our everyday lives, will transform not only our understanding of what it is to be human, but even more significantly, how we experience the natural world and how the whole ecosystem functions” and ends with the following advice: “All of us who are able should try to gain increased pleasure, and insight into the olfactory world that surrounds us, by deliberately exploring this special, magical sense, rather than taking it for granted. As Thomas’s [Lewis Thomas, the American Physician and science writer par excellence] example shows, precious, evocative smells can be found in the most prosaic of circumstances, surrounding us without us even noticing it. But we can change that, by paying attention and deliberately seeking out scents. You can start right now—put your nose into the pages of this book and smell deeply. Go on!”

Matthew Cobb is Professor of Zoology at the University of Manchester. In addition to conducting innovative research on smell, he is a historian of science with many books to his credit including

The Egg and the Sperm: The Seventeenth-Century Scientists Who Unraveled the Secrets of Sex, Life and Growth (2006),

Life’s Greatest Secret: The Race to Crack the Genetic Code (2016),

The Idea of the Brain: A History (2020),

The Genetic Age: Our Perilous Quest To Edit Life (2022) and

Crick: A Mind in Motion (2024).

I thought it may have been a different Matthew Cobb but apparently the same Matthew Cobb has also written

Eleven Days in August: The Liberation of Paris in 1944 (2013) and

The Resistance: The French Fight Against the Nazis (2010).

He has also translated several books on biology and evolution from French into English.

I have had the pleasure of knowing Matthew Cobb. He was at the Laboratoire d’écologie at Université Pierre et Marie Curie (now part of Sorbonne Université) in central Paris, where I frequently visited to work with the late Christian Peeters as part of our Indo-French project. Matthew was the go-to person for information, whether in science, art, food, history or culture. I learned much from him. We even co-authored a paper:

 

(Ramaswamy, K., Peeters, C., Yuvana, S. P., Varghese, T., Pradeep, H. D., Dietemann, V., Karpakakunjaram, V., Cobb, M. and Gadagkar, R. 2004. Social mutilation in the Ponerine ant Diacamma: cues originate in the victims. Insectes Sociaux 51:410–13).

 

 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52049783-smell

 

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