Banzhaf, Wolfgang, and Lidia Yamamoto. Artificial chemistries . MIT Press, 2015.
This book will provide an introduction and broad overview of this still relatively young field of artificial chemistries (ACs). The field is highly interdisciplinary, touching chemistry, biology, computer science, mathematics, engineering, and even physics and social sciences to a certain extent. Therefore, we have tried to make the book as accessible as possible to people from these different disciplines. We assume that the reader has some basic knowledge of mathematics and computer algorithms, and we provide a general introduction to the concepts of chemistry and biology that are most often encountered in ACs.
The book will start with a gentle introduction, discuss different examples of artificial chemistries from different areas proposed in the literature, and then delve into a deeper discussion of both theoretical aspects of ACs and their application in different fields of science and technology. An appendix will offer a hands-on example of an AC toolkit ready for the reader to implement his or her own artificial chemistry on a computer.