Product Description
Recounts the rise of a sophisticated science, from the alchemists' futile attempts to turn lead into gold, to the breakthroughs of the 20th century. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Should be called "History of Chemical Theory"
I can envision three types of history when someone says "History of Chemistry" - 1. tales of the chemists themselves, including ancestory, childhood, education, etc. 2. tales of the experiments they perform and 3. a history of the theories to explain the experiments.This particular book is heavily weighted on the third of these options, and thus, I would have titled this book "History [or Development] of Chemical Theory".

Having narrowed down the scope of what is covered leaves more space to focus on the theory aspects, and it is done very well, especially in the post-Lavoisier era.As mentioned in another review, the Alchemical and Phlogiston theories are much less well developed, which is disappointing.I would also have liked to see more archeological information - a brief discussion of metallurgy in Rome or gunpowder in China would have been interesting, if not particularly scientific.

Finally, although the preface states that anyone with a high school knowledge of science should be able to follow the book, in practice I think that non-chemists (i.e. someone without 2 or 3 university courses) would find it to be heavy slogging.

Well researched, broad coverage of practice and theory
I've only giving this 4 stars because the early part of the book is a little disappointing. The coverage of alchemy is sketchy and the pneumatic chemists are given short shrift. You feel that Brock didn't really have his heart in the pre-Lavoisier history.

By contrast, the treatment ofnineteenth century chemistry is suberb, giving broad and balanced coverageof laboratory practice, industry and theoretical developments. The textconveys a real sense of excitement as the discoveries unfold; Brock does anexcellent job of organising a wealth of technical detail clearly.

Thereis also a good coverage of early twentieth century chemistry, about up tothe point where quantum mechanics took hold.

Overall, highly recommended.But you definitely need a background in chemistry to get the most out ofit.

A captivating book
I was captivated by this book.The book was thoroughly researched and documented, and provided useful insight to the motives behind historical developments.

To enjoy the book, you really need to have a background in chemistry as well as a general knowledge of major historical developments.At times, the book had a disjointed approach, referencing historicalindividuals long before introducing them.Additionally, I would havepreferred a greater focus on the impact of the historical developments oncurrent practice.

Overall, an fascinating and worthwhile endeavor.

Thorough, Comprehensible History of Chemistry
This is an incredibly long and dense book, but well worth the time and effort to read it.It begins with alchemistry and early chemistry, and ends with modern chemistry circa the mid-twentieth century.The mostrecent discoveries and work are therefore not included in this work.

Oneof the most interesting things that I learned was that alchemists believedthat minerals, like animals, had a "perfect form" to which theywere aspiring to reach.They believed that this form was gold.Thus, forthem alchemy was more than just an attempt to enrich themselves; it was aspiritual and religious undertaking as well.

The majority of the bookdeals with modern chemistry, and there are some interesting sections aboutthe Ingold-Robinson feud, environmental chemistry, and the rise of thegreat chemical companies.

One of the biggest downsides of the book wasthat it was almost entirely a history of Western (with a special focus onEuropean) chemistry, although there was also discussion of American andAustralian chemistry.There is so much information here that it isimpossible to read this book in large chunks if you want to be able toabsorb any of it.Some parts may also be difficult to follow for peoplewithout some previous training in chemical theory.Overall, I wouldrecommend it to anyone interested in chemistry, especially chemists whowould like to know the ancient and venerable history of their own field. ... Read more

Product Description
Chemistry explores the way atoms interact, the constitution of the stars, and the human genome. Knowledge of chemistry makes it possible for us to manufacture dyes and antibiotics, metallic alloys, and other materials that contribute to the necessities and luxuries of human life. In Transforming Matter, noted historian Trevor H. Levere emphasizes that understanding the history of these developments helps us to appreciate the achievements of generations of chemists.

Levere examines the dynamic rise of chemistry from the study of alchemy in the seventeenth century to the development of organic and inorganic chemistry in the age of government-funded research and corporate giants. In the past two centuries, he points out, the number of known elements has quadrupled. And because of synthesis, chemistry has increasingly become a science that creates much of what it studies.

Throughout the book, Levere follows a number of recurring themes: theories about the elements, the need for classification, the status of chemical science, and the relationship between practice and theory. He illustrates these themes by concentrating on some of chemistry's most influential and innovative practitioners. Transforming Matter provides an accessible and clearly written introduction to the history of chemistry, telling the story of how the discipline has developed over the years.Amazon.com Review
In 1980, writes historian Trevor Levere, University of Californiaphysicists turned an "unimaginably small sample of bismuth into gold,"turning one element into another through the medium of a particleaccelerator. We call such things experimental science; a medieval scholarwould have called it alchemy, a lay observer magic--all of which, byLevere's account, describe modern chemistry.

The history of chemistry is being rewritten every day, notes Levere. In thelast three decades alone, more than 7.5 million chemical compounds have beendiscovered, while great advances have been made in our understanding of thechemical composition of the heavens and our own planet. Locating itsorigins in ancient and medieval alchemy, the quest to divine the nature ofthe universe, Levere traces the development of chemistry over a series ofconceptual forward steps: from Francis Bacon's development of experimentalmethod to Lavoisier's elucidation of the part of oxygen in combustion andrespiration, from Mendeleyev's invention of the periodic table of theelements to the manufacture of modern microcircuitry (which, Levereobserves, "involves nearly one hundred different chemical processes").

Much as science has progressed, the author notes, the alchemical aspects ofchemistry have not disappeared, as that California experiment shows. Whatlies ahead is anyone's guess, but, Levere concludes, the history of chemicalscience is one of ever-changing boundaries, and "there is no reason toassume that this fluidity will come to a sudden stop." --Gregory McNamee ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

A book from academia that thoroughly explains history of chemistry..
I'm impressed. This book was written and published in academia. Any of my readers can tell you I have less that a good opinion of the ability of those in academia to write science so that we can understand it, let alone enjoy it. This is one book that managed to do just that, and no, I am not selling it as I need it for my poor students who have horrible textbooks to waddle through. This book not only managed to answer questions that I've had during time when I was a student learning chemistry, a graduate using chemistry in the lab, and now an instructor of chemistry...but it also tied everything together in a nice, fairly short package and get a little physics in there too (as it is hard to totally nonsurgically remove these two topics from being intertwined with each other). This is a book I highly recommend to be used as recommended reading or even required reading for students, since it did not cost much and made so many things much clearer than the more expensive textbooks did. The book introduces the r eader to almost all the major ideas and concepts in chemistry, ties them from the alchemist of the 1700s to the experimenters of the 1800s and so on, and allows the students to make a choice of whether to go on and read much more by giving a decent bibliography.

I am going to see if I can find more in these books and series that are as well-written as this book is. Science needs to be understood by everyone, and we should have the choice of whether to take advantage of its accessibility. We shouldn't have to deal with the idea that seems to be cherished among many of the elite at the Ivy League schools that we don't need to be scientifically-literate as announced by the President of Princeton last year when he said that women could not do science...somebody forgot to tell Marie Curie that, and the thousands of women who have worked in and loved science since then. It isn't his decision. It's ours, and every child in this country has a right to equal access to the same information, especially if we work our butts off trying to achieve that equality!

Karen L. Sadler
Chemistry and Science Education
U of PIttsburgh
Community College of Allegheny County

Why I haven't bought this book
The 3 stars given are meaningless because I haven't bought this book. May be it deserves more, may be less. I just wish to explain why, although tempted, I haven't bought it.
Roughly speaking, 90% of our chemical knowledge have been discovered in the 20th century. So I found the title "...from Alchemy to the Buckyball" most appealing. I thought : "this is one of those rare books which discuss also modern chemistry".
When examining the index however, I haven't found the following names : Barton, Butenandt, Corey, Cornforth, Fukui, Haworth, Hoffmann, Lehn, Natta, Prelog, Robinson, Ruzicka, Taub,Wieland, Windaus, Woodward, Ziegler..., all Nobel Prize winners. Not to mention other outstanding chemists like Eschenmoser or Stork.
This may be a very good book for the history of chemistry up to the beginning of the 20th century, it is not a history of the whole science of chemistry. So, with much regret, I did not buy it.

Terrific overview
The one-sentence review runs thus: anyone with an appreciation for science and/or history, particularly both, will enjoy this book.

The author, Trevor Levere, is obviously a consummate historian, with thorough knowledge of the workings of science and its development through the ages. Levere has a keen sense of the humanity and little ironies that make up the twists and turns of the shaping of the state of chemical knowledge at various times, and conveys them in a friendly, readable style. I found the discussion of the various approaches to gases and how knowledge of the gas laws came out out of them particularly interesting (and did you know Robert Boyle in his day was considered an "alchemist"?). The author is very good about zeroing in on the most fertile areas of discovery and expounding upon what came out of them.

There are only a couple of minor problems that don't have much impact on the overall flow of the book. One is that Faraday and electrochemistrywere introduced rather abruptly, with no information about where charge-sign and current conventions came from. It was something I wanted to learn about, and felt it was rather conspicuously absent. The other is the final chapter, about 20th century chemical discoveries (DNA, buckyballs, yadda yadda), which seemed a bit meandering and aimless as a whole.

But overall, excellent, very accessible. Don't hesitate.

An excellent and highly recommended introduction
Transforming Matter: A History Of Chemistry From Alchemy To The Buckyball is a college-level discourse on the history of chemistry and will serve as a fine basic introduction for any studying the history of science as a whole. Chapters begin with early alchemy to survey the rise of theories about the elements, the creation of classification systems, and relationships between scientific method and practices. An excellent and highly recommended introduction. ... Read more

Product Description
From alchemy to industry, a synthetic history of chemistry through the ages. In this authoritative volume, a New York Times Notable Book of 1993, scientific researcher and historian William Brock recounts the astonishing rise of a sophisticated science. Tracing the roots of chemistry back to the alchemists' futile attempts to turn lead into gold, he follows the emergence of the modern study of chemistry through the works of Boyle, Lavoisier, and Dalton, and the twentieth-century breakthroughs of Linus Pauling and others. This timely, comprehensive history examines the shifting conceptions of chemistry over the past centuries--from its development as a scientific philosophy to, more recently, its practical applications in the commercial, industrial arena. Originally published under the title The Norton History of Chemistry. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Worthy topic but poorly written and edited
Poorly written, poorly edited (was it edited?) and painful reading, although the topic of the history of chemistry deserves exploration and could have been made much more interesting and accessible than it was here. The writer is an overly wordy name-dropper, writing over the heads of the average science person, failing to adequately explain identities, information, and uncommon terminology before moving on. Our college class finally gave up on this book and resorted to the use of another text.

Very good history book
In short:

This is the most engaging book of history of chemistry that I have ever read. It is technical sometimes, but if you have a good high school chemistry it will be OK.

Good and interesting, but vastly overrated by the reviewers
The subject matter that Brock takes on is historically complex and rich. Unfortunately, he responds to this challenge by adopting an aloof and arrogant style in describing and detailing some of the problems.His prose and word choice is often needlessly prolix and his descriptions of many of the chemical problems were incomplete.As a Ph.D. chemist, I became suspicious of his treatment of the early history of chemistry and became more and more suspicious as the book progressed into the modern era (with which I am quite familiar).There are many mistakes in his descriptions of chemistry--though some of these seemed to be the result of bad type setting or proofreading. This book would be an impossible read for someone without a background in chemistry-there are simply too many intellectual gaps that the reader must be prepared to fill in.It is as though the author assumed that by expressing a few ideas and facts about each problem the epistemological relationships would become self-evident.This approach rarely succeeds here.A close read by a historian might also reveal an occasional Whiggish streak in his analysis of some of the events.
With this said, I did find the book interesting and informative enough to read it in its entirety.I was particularly ignorant of the history of chemical education before reading it. The disappointment that I've expressed here lies in its promise-I consider it a good first draft.But I wonder, where was the editor? ... Read more

Product Description
From the days of the alchemists through the creation of the modern laboratory, chemistry has been defined by its instruments and experimental techniques. Historians, however, have tended to focus on the course of chemical theory rather than on the tools and experiments that drove the theory. This volume moves chemical instruments and experiments into the foreground of historical concern, in line with the emphasis on practice that characterizes current work on other fields of science and engineering. The principal themes are: change and stability, precision, the construction and transformation of apparatus, the dissemination of instruments, and the bridging of disciplines through instruments. The essays are divided into three chronological sections: The Practice of Alchemy (reviewing the material and iconographic evidence as well as the written record and the issue of reproducibility of alchemical experiments), From Hales to the Chemical Revolution (discussing significant seventeenth- and eighteenth-century innovations as well as smaller innovations that cumulatively extended the reach and improved the quality of chemical experimentation), and The Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries (discussing the increasingly important role of innovative apparatus as chemistry grew into the first large-scale modern scientific discipline).Contributors: R. G. W. Anderson, Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, Maurice Crosland, Jan Golinski, Frederic L. Holmes, Trevor H. Levere, Seymour H. Mauskopf, William R. Newman, Mary Jo Nye, Lawrence M. Principe, Alan J. Rocke, Colin A. Russell, William A. Smeaton, Melvyn Usselman. ... Read more

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This is an OCR edition without illustrations or index. It may have numerous typos or missing text. However, purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original rare book from GeneralBooksClub.com. You can also preview excerpts from the book there. Purchasers are also entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Original Published by: McGraw-Hill in 1918 in 365 pages; Subjects: Science / Chemistry / General; ... Read more

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"Science in World War II" series. TABLE OF CONTENTS: History of Division 8 (explosives & propellants); History of Div 9 (chemical warfare agents); History of Div 10 (Aerosols); History of Div 11 (incendiary bombs & flame-throwers) ... Read more

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Although the goal of immortality was never achieved by the medieval alchemists, history itself can act as a philosopher's stone, extending our lives by enabling us to absorb the experiences and ideas of those who lived before us, and providing a better public understanding of chemistry and the chemical industry. This book draws on the author's own research as well as that of other historians of chemistry. ... Read more

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Superphosphate's history, chemistry, and manufacture! Indexed. ... Read more

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Originally published in 1922. This volume from the Cornell University Library's print collections was scanned on an APT BookScan and converted to JPG 2000 format by Kirtas Technologies.All titles scanned cover to cover and pages may include marks, notations and other marginalia present in the original volume. ... Read more

Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

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Raman Spectroscopy in Archaeology and Art History highlights the important contributions Raman spectroscopy makes as a non-destructive method for characterising the chemical composition and structure and in determining the provenance and authenticity of objects of archaeological and historical importance. It brings together studies from diverse areas and represents the first dedicated work on use of this technique in this increasingly important field.

Coverage includes: An Introduction to Raman Spectroscopy, including practical aspects of Raman spectroscopy and complementary techniques; Dyes and Pigments; Artefacts; Biological Materials and Degradation; Jewellery and Precious Stones. The book contains a broad selection of real-world examples in the form of case studies to provide the reader with a true appreciation of the procedures that need to be invoked to derive spectroscopic information from some of the most challenging specimens and systems. Colour illustrations of objects of investigation and a database of 72 Raman spectra of relevant minerals are included.

With its extensive examples, Raman Spectroscopy in Archaeology and Art History will be of particular interest to specialists in the field, including researchers and scientific/conservation staff in museums. Academics will find it an invaluable reference to the use of Raman spectroscopy.

Product Description
Man's history is tied up in the hydrological cycle. Its chemical and physical attributes dramatically affect its movement and quality within its major reservoirs, our oceans and atmosphere. This volume deals with a myriad of finite features of these fascinating fields along with aspects of water tied up in man's culture and history from the beginning of recorded time. ... Read more

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This lively collection looks at science as filtered through literature, film, and television. It discusses classic works in science fiction and provides an in-depth look at the chemistry depicted in popular culture, particularly in Start Trek, Star Wars, and Doctor Who. It includes an examination by Nebula Award winner Connie Willis of how science fiction authors use science, and reprints two tongue-in-cheek short stories by Isaac Asimov. The book also includes suggestions for using science fiction as an educational resource. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

An interesting collection of essays on SF and chemistry
Chemistry is the poor cousin to biology and physics when it comes to scientific portrayals in science fiction.Even Isaac Asimov with his degree in biochemistry had a tendency to neglect his roots when writing in the SF genre.However, as the "central science," it's inevitable that chemistry will crop up frequently, even if it's not the central focus of the story.This book contains a number of essays that point out the chemistry in science fiction stories ranging from Wells and Conan Doyle to Star Trek.

The book starts with a general overview of SF from Connie Willis, the only professional author to contribute to the book.This is a nice chapter that categorises the use of science in SF (use as plot device vs. subject vs. metaphor, etc.).

There are two general types of articles - those dealing with a particular story/author/series, and those that deal more generally with a topic.I found the latter more interesting (especially the chapter entitled "Planetary Chemistry in 100 Years of SF"), although there were fewer of those.The ubiquitos Star Trek franchise pops up as the subject of two chapters, as well as an analysis of Sherlock Holmes' use of chemistry.Naturally, these chapters are much more rewarding if you've seen the Trek episodes or read the Holmes stories (which I have).I found the sections on the TV show "Dr. Who" and the book "Gravity's Rainbow" to be ponderous and uninteresting, but I suspect it's because I don't know the original source material.

Since all the chapters are written by chemists, the chemical analysis is generally quite good.The authors are lenient in forgiving obvious chemical errors, something I would not be so inclined to do.

The book ends with some discussion on using SF as a classroom resource to increase interest in the sciences (and chemistry in particular).Unfortunately, this is directed to the university level, where it's too late to attract students to the sciences (this must be done at the grade 9 level, or even earlier).I think the best audience for this book would be for students training to be science teachers in the public school system.Although it's getting a little out of date (science teachers today use ER and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, not The Next Generation and Asimov), it should give budding science teachers a number of good ideas for improving interest in science in their students.

Thus, this book is an enjoyable read for anyone that has an interest in both science fiction and chemistry, especially if you're an educator. ... Read more