Organic chemistry (original 1959; edition 1992)

Chapter 1 -- Structure and Properties -- 1.1 Organic chemistry -- Organic chemistry is the chemistry of the compounds of carbon.

Thus, the structure of nucleic acid molecules determines the structure of protein molecules. The structure of protein molecules, as we have seen, determines the way in which they control living processes. Biology is becoming more and more a matter of shapes and sizes of molecules. -- At the beginning of this book, we said that the structural theory is the basis of the science of organic chemistry. It is much more than that: the structural theory is the basis of our understanding of life.