Norman Cheetham has extensive science teaching experience at Secondary School, Teachers' College and University level. He has contributed chapters to three science text books used in Australian Secondary Schools, and developed the chemistry sections of a set of overhead projector-based teaching materials. Until retirement, he was an Associate Professor in the School of Chemistry, the University of NSW, Sydney, where he taught courses in food chemistry, polymer chemistry, carbohydrates, drug analysis, and instrumental techniques. He is now an Adjunct Professor at the University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia, and is still involved in teaching and research.

"(Cheetham) has a knack of explaining the physics and chemistry of these complex interactions in a most digestible form, thus providing a firm basis for general biologists." -- Bulletin of the British Technological Society

"This remarkable book was written for those who have already had an introduction to the subjects it covers, but who have progressed beyond to a deeper understanding of a single subject, or have information they originally acquired transformed into a mist of past experience...It is enjoyable to read, and represents a highly successful effort on the part of the author to incorporate such an abundance of ideas and facts into a flowing, eminently readable narrative." -- The Quarterly Review of Biology

"This textbook offers the reader not only a more detailed understanding of how living things use and are shaped by thermodynamics, a wonder at and respect for the problems life has solved in order to exist, but an awareness of our interdependence and fragility. As a scientifically literate person who would have studied the areas he discusses in my bachelor's degree program over 50 years ago (which was before some of the discoveries which inform this book), I found reading it to be challenging, fascinating, and worthwhile." -- Margaret Sharpe, University of New England, Australia