Farzeen Mahmud '12 calls organic chemistry "a beautiful thing." She proves it, too, by regularly going—alone and without notes—to a classroom stocked with colorful chalk to review recent lectures she's heard, and to re-draw from memory the chemical reaction mechanisms written out by her professor. Here she reviews a lesson in carbonyl condensation reactions. Mahmud, who is from Rockville, Maryland, credits professor Jimmy Wu for inspiring her love of the subject—and her desire to some day teach it.
