Perfume Pilgrim

It was just as well that his new book, Perfumes The Guide has yet to be published, because afterwards he joked, he “would have to wear a bullet proof vest!” Thus commenced an extraordinary lucid joint lecture by Turin for the British Society of Perfumers and the Society of Cosmetic Scientists held at the Kings Fund in London earlier this evening. Actually, I hope he does give another lecture after Profile Books publish this new guide, perhaps from behind a pope shield?

Although his third lecture for the SCS he introduced this as his goodbye talk as he is due to take a sabbatical from Flexitrol and go back to University at MIT to work on sensors and molecular electronics.  During his time between 2002 and 2007 with Flexitral they have patented numerous new odorants, and they seem to have been churning them out at a phenomenal rate,  even with 2/3 of the cash available going to patent lawyers.

He apologised for sounding bitter about the filing of similar patents by rival companies, shortly after theirs. However, it is because to paraphrase him, “I actually am!” Jibes aside, this was a detailed slide presentation on the latest research, or state of the art of what we know about the olfactory system. I confess, most of the science, despite clear and illustrated diagrams went over my head.

I did take note though of some of the quirkier explanations. For example, the olfactory bulb was described as the only ”bit of the brain hanging in the breeze” and his revelation that some people don’t even have a bone in front of it, though most of us have “the snot on the way,” did surprise me.  Apparently, odour receptors are proteins in the membranes. I also heard that  347 odorant receptors for smell have been sequenced in the human genome. Interestingly, these are not all found in the brain. There are some in the heart, kidney and even sperm.

Our receptors can smell 10’s of thousands of smells and large odor companies like Givaudan have samples of over 200,000 scent molecules.  Any odor molecule is processed by the olfactory epithelium, onto the olfactory bulb and onto the Neocortex, where brain imaging can show how certain odors light up different parts of the brain. There are so many more  odorants than there are receptors.

The discussions of various academic papers relating to the smell were discussed by Turin, as well as the human capacity to smell the difference between isotopes. The talk lasted approximately one hour and a lucky few had the opportunity to ask some questions.

I would have liked to ask about his forthcoming book, but appreciated the opportunity to have a brief chat with his eloquent wife and co-author Tania Sanchez. I asked her what perfume she was wearing and she volunteered that tonight it was the infamous Nombre Noir.  (I am sure there must be an amazing story of how they had a acquired a bottle of it, but I daren’t ask) PS: Thanks to Heather from Memory and Desire for sharing the Nombre Noir Story by Turin

I can only dream of having an opportunity to smell some of the many hundreds, if not thousands of perfume bottles that might be in their possession. Just as I am sure eyes never tire of beauty or loved ones, nor the ears of speach and music, so I doubt that even in smelling thousands of scents, my nose will ever tire of the amazing array of scent compositions all those talented perfumers and scientists, have dedicated their talent and time to create.  ”Thank you for the music, the songs your singing, thanks for all the joy their bringing…”