Avery Gilbert has a long track record in the field of smell psychology. His research papers have been published in renowned academic journals since the 1980s, and he has been a consultant to many large firms in the fragrance industry. What the Nose Knows is his first book, and deals with the psychology of odor perception. Piet Vroon and Rachel Herz have written very accessible books on this subject, but their work was primarily focused on the relation between olfaction, emotion and behavior. Gilbert's main mission is a different one: to challenge the assumption that the human nose is somehow inferior to that of other species. “Dogs have great noses,” he writes in the chapter on olfactory prodigies, “but it's time to stop the trash talk and give ourselves more credit” (p.63). His message is simple: there's nothing wrong with our nose, we're just not very good at using it.

Since the days of Charles Darwin (1809-1882) and Havelock Ellis (1859-1939), the notion that humans have a poor sense of smell has been more or less taken for granted. Scientists agreed that olfaction had lost its importance to humans from an evolutionary perspective, and that it was barely of use to modern man. In recent years, however, neurobiologists and sensory physiologists have gained better insights into the inner mechanisms of our nose…

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