Book Review: NMR Multiplet Interpretation: An Infographic Walk Through, by Roman A. Valiulin

Reviewed by Abdul Hasib

Officer on Special Duty (OSD), Directorate of Secondary and Higher Education, Dhaka, Bangladesh; Assistant Professor of Chemistry (in-situ), Kazipur Government Mansur Ali College, Kazipur, Sirajgonj, Bangladesh. 82abdulhasib@gmail.com

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1255/sew.2022.a9
© 2022 The Author
Published under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND licence

In his article “of studies”, Francis Bacon said “some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested”¹ and this monograph on proton nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, should be “chewed and digested” as Bacon continued to elaborate, “some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention”.¹NMR Multiplet Interpretation: An Infographic Walk-Through by Dr Roman A. Valiulin deserves your time perusing it from top to bottom with, as quoted above, “diligence and attention”. This should be the piece that proton NMR spectroscopy readers would, for sure, “try their hand at it”, for “it took over a decade of study, practice, and experience” (preface) to conceptualise followed by the materialisation of this chef-d’oeuvre: the author’s “dream book” (foreword).

It is a “dream book”—a “dream book” of the author having “more visuals than text”, thereby presenting its readers a “study aid” that would function as not only a “portable tutor” but also a useful “analytical kinesthetic” learning tool (foreword). And it is an infographic book on ¹H NMR, perhaps the first of its kind that, like heteronuclear coupling, has made a juncture between the “realm of science and art” (foreword)—a new initiative by an organic chemist who, as an amateur artist, enjoys dabbling with drawings in his other times. And in parallel, this is a “workbook” for, as the author contends, it “provides a guided work-through of NMR spectra interpretation” on “simple and complex first-order ¹H NMR multiplets” (introduction). Being fundamentally divided into four parts, this booklet discusses the first order multiplets: simple (chapter 2) to complex (chapter 3), followed by the mnemonic rules (chapter 4) and the exercises (with answers) with their increasing difficulty levels (chapter 5).

This book is designed for specifically “developing organic chemists” (introduction), “research chemists” seeking to have a fair dealing with the proton NMR spectra by reliably reporting them for possible publication (preface) as well as the “experienced chemists” who would find more practice regarding proton NMR explanation (introduction), and it is equally targeted for the chemistry undergraduate and graduate students as their chemistry “course companion” (introduction).

It should not be a hyperbole, rather a fact of relevance that in spite of being a chemistry graduate nearly a decade ago with a degree required specialisation in organic chemistry, I have been searching on and off for years to find a book on NMR spectroscopy, more specifically proton magnetic resonance (PMR)² or ¹H NMR etc.³ spectroscopy, or even proton MRS.⁴ It was my hope that it might work as a step-by-step guide in interpreting, in the easiest or a practical way, the PMR spectra obtained from my own graduate work. One might easily be surfeited with the resources on spectroscopy, ranging from books,⁵ spectra analysis software,^6,7 spectra databases⁸ and handbooks⁵ as well as web pages,^9–14 blogs, forums etc.^15–17 to the scholarly literature of earlier¹⁸ and contemporary spectroscopists specifically dealing with the interpretative ways of PMR spectra,^19–24 yet a reader like me, perhaps alike many other spectroscopy readers, might assume to embrace the situation as depicted by Coleridge:

“day after day, day after day,
we stuck, nor breath nor motion;
as idle as a painted ship
upon a painted ocean”,²⁵

or spend too much time to catch on the spectral matters that could be regarded “sloth” as ascribed in “of studies”.¹ And yes; for many of us could easily get stuck with or be a sluggish learner of NMR spectroscopy, there might have something to which the “causation in the law”²⁶ could be attributed as diagnosed by the present author himself: even if there were “many excellent textbooks” emphasising either the “basic examples or covering complex, rare, and even seemingly obscure ¹H NMR multiplet cases” or the “math and physics that undergird the technique”, those, at their end, would become less “accessible or useful for the organic chemists in their day-to-day research” (preface). Such a paradoxical happening, though unexpected, was inevitable as a result of perhaps adhering to the “general norm of the writers”. Yet, there were some endeavours to challenge this general trend in composing the chemistry books that received a welcome as Azman said in his review of such a book: “this textbook is a refreshing deviation from the norm”²⁷ and the present booklet could be treated in the same fashion. With such a deviation “from the norm” that “many academics would consider ‘mainstream’ or ‘accepted’”²⁷ and invoking the newest approach to learning NMR (the infographic), this book is distinct in itself.

The efficacy of the author’s work could be well understood from the voice of, amongst many authors, Hoye and his co-workers: “the emergence of routine multidimensional NMR spectroscopy has been accompanied by a decline in the learning, teaching, and practice of the important skill of assigning first-order multiplets by inspection”.¹⁹ In this context, this masterwork, as a “visual pedagogical tool” (preface) might be regarded as a “good alternative addition” to the teaching–learning landscape of organic spectroscopy. In addition, the multi-paint facet of the infographics with the author’s selective choice of colour would, for sure, work as fuel to learning a critical subject through visualisation.

Though the merit of this book is unique, originating from the author’s own journey—a long distance traversed by him as a “student, teaching assistant, graduate and postdoctoral researcher as well as an individual tutor” (introduction and preface) accompanied by his “hobby for art” (foreword)—this workbook lends its “conceptual framework” (preface) from, as its author refers to, the pioneering work of Hoye et al.¹⁹ Every work has its own limitations, and this is true for the one under discussion as we are heard from its author: “this book is not intended to be a scientific paper nor a literature review... (preface) and is not intended to be a comprehensive nor exhaustive study of the fundamental theory... (introduction), it omits discussion of NMR theory and should not be used as a comprehensive textbook... readers seeking to become more specialised in the subject-matter may wish to utilise this workbook in conjunction with dedicated coursework on spectroscopy” (preface). Importantly then, one essential tool to searching in a book, i.e. the index, has not been provided. However, this is less important due to the fact that the core discussion has been aesthetically truncated to nearly 50 pages.

At the dénouement of this brief write-up, I should take a position on my own that if I were asked to choose, from a dozen of collections of books discussing ¹H NMR spectra, the only one I would surely have picked up is this infographic book for, with this “guided walk through” work of genius, I have to walk through the “only scholars’ zone” of NMR spectroscopy in spite of being myself one of the common readers of it:

“But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep”.²⁸

Now, for the members of the chemistry family: the (organic) chemists, students, amateur collectors or the librarians—it’s your turn to choose yours!

References

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3. Proton Nuclear Magnetic Resonance. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton_nuclear_magnetic_resonance
4. E. Novotny, S. Ashwal and M. Shevell, “Proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy: an emerging technology in pediatric neurology research”, Pediatr. Res. 44(1), 1–10 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1203/00006450-199807000-00001
5. Spectroscopy Textbooks/Handbooks. University of California San Diego. https://ucsd.libguides.com/spectra/textbooks
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7. Category: NMR software. NMR Wiki. http://nmrwiki.org/wiki/index.php?title=Category:NMR_software
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23. G.F. Pauli, S.N. Chen, D.C. Lankin, J. Bisson, R.J. Case, L.R. Chadwick, T. Gödecke, T. Inui, A. Krunic, B.U. Jaki, J.B. McAlpine, S. Mo, J.G. Napolitano, J. Orjala, J. Lehtivarjo, S.-P. Korhonen and M. Niemitz, “Essential parameters for structural analysis and dereplication by ¹H NMR spectroscopy”, J. Nat. Prod. 77(6), 1473–1487 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1021/np5002384
24. J. Nowick, Multiplet Guide and Workbook. https://www.chem.uci.edu/~jsnowick/groupweb/files/MultipletGuideV4.pdf
25. S.T. Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. L.C. Page and Company, Boston, Vol. 2 (1900).
26. M. Moore, “Causation in the Law”, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Ed by E.N. Zalta, Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University (2019).
27. A.M. Azman, “Teaching chemistry through history”, Nature Chem. 5(5), 353 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nchem.1635
28. R. Frost, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”, in The Poetry of Robert Frost, Ed by E. C. Lathem, Henry Holt and Company, Inc., New York (1969).