What we now call chemistry began in the cauldrons of mystics and sorcerers seeking not to make a better world through science, but rather to make themselves rich. But among these early magicians, frauds, and con artists were a few far-seeing alchemists who, through rigorous expe…
Annotation Annotation
More than any other science, the history of chemistry is intimately linked to human history. Chemical technology has fostered the development of civilizations, altered the course of wars, generated the industrial revolution, and created the petroleum and plastics that fuel and s…
Alchimia: l'oro della conoscenza
by Buysschaert, Martine, Aromatico, Andrea
fromUniversale Electa/Gallimard
"In The Alchemy of Paint: Art, Science and Secrets from the Middle Ages, Spike Bucklow sets out to unravel the myths behind pigments like dragonsblood - said to be a mixture of elephant and dragon blood. Examining both the medieval palette and the often cloak-and-dagger science …
Since the Enlightenment, alchemy has been viewed as a sort of antiscience, disparaged by many historians as a form of lunacy that impeded the development of rational chemistry. But in Atoms and Alchemy, William R. Newman--a historian widely credited for reviving recent interest …