—Berlin exhibit features alchemical oddities from around the globe “Artifacts among the 230 objects on display harken back to the early days of chemistry” Over the past several decades, historians of chemistry have refurbished the reputation of alchemists. Long seen as con artists who claimed they could produce life-extending elixirs and convert base metals into gold and silver, alchemists pursued a lot of serious chemistry too.
by Sarah Everts | May 22, 2017
Among these are equipment: a microscope, a telescope, and an alembic (an alchemical still used for distillation). A lab-coat-wearing scientist emoji, proposed by a team at Google, will come out in 2017 in a set of career-focused emoji that includes a farmer, a cook, a teacher, a mechanic, and an artist. Rose Yen, a chemist at San Francisco-based Rigel Pharmaceuticals, says an appreciation and understanding of how symbolic imagery reflects culture can have broad impact. “Science emoji can convey that science is more than just” a career, Yen says. Science can be powerful, but also fun, she adds. “I would like to see that representation assimilated more into our culture.”
by Jessica Morrison | November 28, 2016
As is the case for many alchemical recipes, the images in “Atalanta Fugiens” provide intentionally obtuse, secretive instructions for sublimation, calcination, and other alchemical processes. But before you assume that the musical score was simply a recommended laboratory soundtrack for the trendy 17th-century alchemist, look to the research of Chemical Heritage Foundation scholar Donna Bilak.
by Sarah Everts | March 24, 2014
—Reconstructing Alchemical Experiments “” In this week’s issue of C&EN, I wrote a profile of Larry Principe, a professor of organic chemistry and the history of science at Johns Hopkins University. Principe studies alchemy with the goal of understanding the evolution of modern-day chemistry. But he doesn’t just study alchemy. He also carries out his own alchemical experiments to get a handle on the thought processes of those experimentalists who tried to make gold from cheaper materials. One school of alchemists that Principe got particularly interested in is a group who focused on making gold by starting with mercury. Back in the 16th and 17th centuries in Europe, Principe says, “there was a lot of disagreement about what material to start with—what you actually go to your apothecary and get 20 lb of to start trying to” transmute base metals and chemicals into gold.
by Lauren Wolf | August 29, 2011
“If I’m reading an alchemical text,” Principe says, “I can understand more or less what the author is describing” with a little translation. But after actually carrying out the experiment in his small fume hood at Johns Hopkins, he adds, “there are so many more levels of meaning that become clear, and you understand more of what the author is about.”
by Lauren K. Wolf | August 29, 2011
In another chapter of this section, sociologist Peter Weingart of the University of Bielefeld, in Germany, uses a quantitative analysis of some 200 films produced since 1897 to look at the use of alchemical imagery. He finds 12 titles relating to alchemy. Besides films with these titles, he finds chemistry in many other movies and asserts that "most films dealing with chemistry... are meant to frighten their viewers."
by Martha L. Casey | June 02, 2008