Biochemistry by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
iubmb.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/bmb.2002.494030030067 Surprises and revelations in biochemistry: 1950-2000 by Perry A. Frey (2006). This should be worth a read.
Frederick Sanger by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
Ah, this seems like a nice dude.
The Eighth Day of Creation has two nice paragraphs about his work. He was shy and quiet, and didn't boast about his slow and steady progress, possibly because of this he only had a junior fellowship and at some point some people wanted to kick him out of the lab somewhere between 1948 - 1952, quoted at: sandwalk.blogspot.com/2013/11/fred-sanger-1918-2013.html
Video 1.
Fred Sanger 1918-2013 by Birgitta Olofsson (2013)
Source. This is a good video especially is you know Cambridge, to help situate Sanger's places a bit. Good Sanger quote at the end:
I always tell people, it is much easier to get the second one than the first
DuPont by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
They made gunpowder. Then the American Civil War came. Billions, baby.
Military links carried over well into World War II, where e.g. they built the B Reactor.
Total synthesis by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
TODO why can't we produce organic compounds more cheaply by total synthesis than biosynthesis?
Video 1.
Computer Aided Simulation & Design in Chemical Engineering by Chemical Engineering Guy (2016)
Source. Interesting overview of the different types of modelling software used in chemical process design.
Video 2.
How to Design a Total Synthesis by Mike Christiansen (2013)
Source. Just a ultra quick hello world with some very basic ideas, but worth watching.
Video 3.
SuperPro Designer: Fermentation Simulation by LearnChemE (2012)
Source.
Video 1.
Process Simulation Software FREE Download - Aspen Hysys versus DWSim | COCO by Jeferson Costa (2020)
Source. Jeferson, a Brazilian from Petrobras, is the creator of the open source DWSim software, and in this video he gives a quick demo of his software and compares it briefly to aspen HYSYS, which appears to be the golden paid reference implementation.
Aspen HYSYS by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
Video 1.
Aspen Hysys Introduction by Emmanuel Oloyede (2016)
Source. Holy crap, the UI is identical to Microsoft Word with that huge top bar!!!

Pinned article: Introduction to the OurBigBook Project

Welcome to the OurBigBook Project! Our goal is to create the perfect publishing platform for STEM subjects, and get university-level students to write the best free STEM tutorials ever.
Everyone is welcome to create an account and play with the site: ourbigbook.com/go/register. We belive that students themselves can write amazing tutorials, but teachers are welcome too. You can write about anything you want, it doesn't have to be STEM or even educational. Silly test content is very welcome and you won't be penalized in any way. Just keep it legal!
We have two killer features:
  1. topics: topics group articles by different users with the same title, e.g. here is the topic for the "Fundamental Theorem of Calculus" ourbigbook.com/go/topic/fundamental-theorem-of-calculus
    Articles of different users are sorted by upvote within each article page. This feature is a bit like:
    • a Wikipedia where each user can have their own version of each article
    • a Q&A website like Stack Overflow, where multiple people can give their views on a given topic, and the best ones are sorted by upvote. Except you don't need to wait for someone to ask first, and any topic goes, no matter how narrow or broad
    This feature makes it possible for readers to find better explanations of any topic created by other writers. And it allows writers to create an explanation in a place that readers might actually find it.
    Figure 1.
    Screenshot of the "Derivative" topic page
    . View it live at: ourbigbook.com/go/topic/derivative
  2. local editing: you can store all your personal knowledge base content locally in a plaintext markup format that can be edited locally and published either:
    This way you can be sure that even if OurBigBook.com were to go down one day (which we have no plans to do as it is quite cheap to host!), your content will still be perfectly readable as a static site.
    Figure 2.
    You can publish local OurBigBook lightweight markup files to either https://OurBigBook.com or as a static website
    .
    Figure 3.
    Visual Studio Code extension installation
    .
    Figure 4.
    Visual Studio Code extension tree navigation
    .
    Figure 5.
    Web editor
    . You can also edit articles on the Web editor without installing anything locally.
    Video 3.
    Edit locally and publish demo
    . Source. This shows editing OurBigBook Markup and publishing it using the Visual Studio Code extension.
    Video 4.
    OurBigBook Visual Studio Code extension editing and navigation demo
    . Source.
  3. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook-media/master/feature/x/hilbert-space-arrow.png
  4. Infinitely deep tables of contents:
    Figure 6.
    Dynamic article tree with infinitely deep table of contents
    .
    Descendant pages can also show up as toplevel e.g.: ourbigbook.com/cirosantilli/chordate-subclade
All our software is open source and hosted at: github.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook
Further documentation can be found at: docs.ourbigbook.com
Feel free to reach our to us for any help or suggestions: docs.ourbigbook.com/#contact