Seth C. Rasmussen is a Professor of Chemistry at North Dakota State University (NDSU) in Fargo. He received his B.S in Chemistry from Washington State University in 1990 and his Ph.D. in Inorganic Chemistry from Clemson University in 1994, under the guidance of Prof. John D. Peterson. As a postdoctoral associate at the University of Oregon, he then studied conjugated organic polymers under Prof. James E. Hutchison. In 1997, he accepted a teaching position at the University of Oregon, before moving to join the faculty at NDSU in 1999. As both an author and editor, Prof. Rasmussen has contributed to books in both materials and history and has published more than 80 research papers and book chapters. He also currently serves as the Program Chair for the History of Chemistry division of the American Chemical Society and as the series editor for the Springer Briefs in Molecular Science: History of Chemistry book series.
The chapters all provide a generally reliable narrative introduction to their respective topics, with careful documentation from secondary literature. [...] students without knowledge of chemistry will find clear introductions to most of the important technologies of the ancient world that made use of chemical processes. -- John Peter Oleson, Metascience