Who am I

My day job is science. I am a Research Professor at the University of Buckingham, in the UK. I have done work on the mechanism of smell, which you can see here and here. There is a science book about me and one science book by me. My current scientific interest is the mechanism of general anesthesia. If you want to take a look at my scientific work, my publications are here, and a lecture on anesthesia is here.

I have long had an interest in perfume as an art form. My definition of art is “anything that is both beautiful and hard to do,” and perfumery certainly is both. The difference between a smell and a fragrance is that a fragrance conveys the intent of the perfumer who composed it. A perfume is therefore a message in a bottle, and it turns out I’m pretty good at reading the message, or at least at offering one reading of it.

Accordingly, I have written and co-written three perfume guides, one small one by myself in French (now translated ) in 1992, and in English a second one in 2008 and a third one in 2018, the latter two written with my wife, Tania Sanchez. Since 2018, I’ve gone back and forth on whether to write another one, but have decided the Substack blog form is better suited to what I want to do.

Why subscribe

My posts will typically consist of two parts:

(1) An article about a particular perfumery firm whose work, either historical or current interests me. This will be free to read.

(2) Paid subscribers will have access to individual perfume reviews, usually recent releases.

I have, however, decided to cease giving perfumes star ratings, because I feel that they can carry too much weight.

New posts will typically come weekly. I plan to do ask-me-anything posts approximately once a month. I will also occasionally post about other things that interest me.