Starting in the 1760s, the Lavoisiers refined the tools and techniques of chemistry from the heady, mystical practices of alchemy. Most of the couple’s possessions were taken by looters during the French Revolution, but the Arts et Métiers contains the lion’s share of what remains along with replicas painstakingly crafted from drawings, experimental procedures, and other historical documents.
by Craig Bettenhausen | June 10, 2022
Kerri: Larry’s a professor at Johns Hopkins University, and he studies the history of alchemy as a window into the origins of modern chemistry. Lawrence Principe: So, much of what I’ve been doing is trying to figure out what kind of practices and ideas the alchemists had and how those relate to later chemistry to argue for a continuity of ideas and practices, really, from the Middle Ages, or even before from the Islamic Middle Ages, up to the present.
by Gina Vitale | January 22, 2021
—Ainissa Ramirez discusses how society and technology interact “Author of The Alchemy of Us explains how she approached telling stories about invention” In her new book The Alchemy of Us: How Humans and Matter Transformed One Another, materials scientist Ainissa Ramirez explores how technology and society shape each other.
by Ariana Remmel | August 29, 2020
Principe is a coauthor on several history of science books, including The Correspondence of Robert Boyle, Alchemy Tried in the Fire, The Secrets of Alchemy, and The Transmutations of Chymistry: Wilhelm Homberg and the Académie Royale des Sciences. The HIST Award includes an engraved plaque and a check for $1,500, which will be presented to Principe at the fall American Chemical Society national meeting in San Francisco.
by Linda Wang | March 21, 2020
/education/Historic-launches-chemstronaut-celebrated-Geoffrey/98/i7 20200216 98 7 /magazine/98/09807.html Historic launches: A chemstronaut celebrated and Geoffrey Chaucer app-reciated education, space, black history month, astronaut, canterbury tales, chaucher, alchemy, app newscript Megha Satyanarayana education Into the heavens: A spacecraft named after Maj.
by Megha Satyanarayana | February 16, 2020
And medicine stayed one of the main fields for antimony application (besides alchemy). In the 13th century, Roger Bacon described several of its properties, and in the 17th century, Theodor Kerckring wrote the first monograph of a chemical element about antimony. In addition, antimony is part of the canon of homeopathy and has been widely applied in the past few centuries.
by Nina Ulrich | August 04, 2019
On a plant tour, Bill Atkins, Callery’s manager of product stewardship, likens the metal conversion to alchemy. To make alkali metal alkoxides, also known as alcoholates, Callery combines potassium and other reactive metals with an alcohol. “We can take any metal and react it with any alcohol,” Atkins says.
by Michael McCoy | July 27, 2019
I managed to catch him during a rare gap in his busy travel schedule, and he told me he sees a relationship between the modern effort to identify new elements and the ancient practice of alchemy. Yuri Oganessian: Alchemists, they were the first who wanted to make gold from the lead, they wanted to transform the element from one to another one.
by Kerri Jansen | April 24, 2019