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THE
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Also BY RICHARD MORRIS
Achil/l/es in the Quantum Universe: The Definitive History of Infinity
Artificial/ Worlds: Computers, Compl/exity, and the Riddl/e of Life
Big Questions: Probing the Promise and Limits of Science
Cosmic Questions: Galactic Hal/os, Cold Dark Matter and the End of
TMe
Dismantling the Universe: The Nature of Scientific Discovery
The Evollutionists: The Strugglle for Darwin's Soul
The Nature of Reallity: The Universe After Einstein
The Universe, the El/even th Dimension, and Everything: What We Know
and How We Know It
Time's Arrows: Scientific Attitudes Toward Time
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THE HUH Fag ALCHL~Y
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TO THL /EKTODIC ABLE
Richard Horrk
Joseph Henry Press
Washington' D.C.
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Joseph Henry Press · 500 Fifth Street, NW · Washington, DC 20001
The Joseph Henry Press, an imprint of the National Academies Press,
was created with the goal of making books on science, technology,
and health more widely available to professionals and the public.
Joseph Henry was one of the founders of the National Academy of
Sciences and a leader in early American science.
Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed
in this volume are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect
the views of the National Academy of Sciences or its affiliated institu-
tions.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Morris, Richard, 1939-2003
The last sorcerers: the path from alchemy to the periodic table /
Richard Morris.
p. cm.
Inclu(les bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-309-08905-0 (hbk.) ISBN 0-309-50593-3 (PDF)
1. Chemistry History. I. Title.
QDll.M86 2003
540'.9 dc22
2003014790
Cover: Alchemist's Laboratory, ~ David Lees/CORBIS; Dalton's List
of Atomic Weight and Symbols, ~ Science Photo Library.
Copyright 2003 by Richard Morris. All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America
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Preface
1 The Four Elements
2 Prelude to the Birth of Chemistry
3 The Sceptical Chymist
4 The Discovery of the Elements
5 A Nail for the Coffin
6 "Only an Instant to Cut OR That Hea(l"
7 The Atom
8 Problems with Atoms
9 The Periodic Law
10 Deciphering the Atom
Epilogue: The Continuing Search
Appendix: A Catalog of the Elements
Further Reading
In(lex
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265
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Nowadays we hear a great deal about physicists' ongoing
effort to understand the nature of the universe's ultimate
constituents. Numerous books are written about the
physics of elementary particles, about the hypothetical objects known
as superstrings, and about the "dark matter" that constitutes a large
part of the universe's mass. Millions of words are written about
attempts to probe their mysteries.
However, the quest to understand what the world was made of
did not begin with discoveries in physics but in the West with the
ancient Greeks, who pondered the ultimate constituents of matter
and advanced a number of theories before concluding that there were
four elements: earth, air, fire, and water. Of course the theory was
wrong, but for sheer longevity, it was one of the most successful ever
proposed. It lasted more than 2,000 years.
Not until the sixteenth century did questions about the ultimate
nature of things began to be asked again. Although the four-element
theory continued to be accepted, new attempts were made to better
. .
V11
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. . .
V111
THE LAST SORCERERS
understand it. The questioning continued until the eighteenth
century, when the natural philosophers (there were no "scientists"
then; that word did not come into general use until the middle of the
nineteenth century) who pondered such things created the science of
chemistry.
Creating a new science was an arduous task, one that continued
over the course of many generations. The four-element theory had
held sway for so long that it required well over a century of experi-
mentation, observation, and theorizing to overturn it. One impedi-
ment was the lack of a modern conception of a chemical element.
And although many chemists believed that matter was made of atoms,
they couldn't describe the properties of an atom with any confidence.
Some chemists refused to believe that such things even existed. In
their view atoms were nothing more than a useful fiction. It wasn't
until 1905 that Albert Einstein settled the question, showing that
observations of a phenomenon known as the Brownian movement
provided proof that atoms were real.
During most of the eighteenth century chemists remained igno-
rant of the nature of the substances they worked with. None of the
three most abundant elements in the Earth's crust oxygen, silicon,
and aluminum had yet been discovered. Chemists didn't know that
air could be broken down into different components, and they
remained ignorant of such gasses as oxygen, nitrogen, and hydrogen,
all of which play important roles in chemical reactions. Yet they never
ceased searching for the key to the universe knowledge of what the
worI(1 was ma(le of and important new (discoveries were ma(le in
every generation. By the end of the century modern chemistry had
been created.
In the course of this surge of chemical research, new problems
arose almost as soon as the old ones were solved. By the mid-
nineteenth century about 60 chemical elements were known, and it
was puzzling that there were so many. Could the universe really have
60 (1ifferent fun(lamental components? And if it (li(l, what were the
relationships between them? Why did some have properties very
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PREFACE
AX
much like those of some others? Was it possible to find some order in
the chaotic table of the elements?
THE I,IVE~ OF THE CHEMI$~$
A number of chemistry histories describe discoveries in great detail. I
have not attempted to duplicate what they do so well. Instead I have
concentrated on the lives of the people who transformed chemistry
into a modern science. I have not shied away from explaining their
most important discoveries, but I have not dweHed on the technical
details.
The lives of these men were often eventful, but eventful in
different ways. For example, there was Robert Boyle, who is widely
considered the founder of the science of chemistry. But Boyle was an
alchemist as well as a chemist, and he spent the greater part of his life
seeking the Philosopher's Stone, the elusive substance that could sup-
posedly transform base metals into gold. His search for the Stone led
to some misadventures that I describe in detail.
Today Joseph Priestley is known as one of the discoverers of oxy-
gen.* However, in his own day his liberal political views branded him
as a dangerous political radical. Priestley once had to flee when a roy-
alist mob destroyed his house and laboratory, and he later emigrated
to the United States when his friends a(lvise(1 him that he was risking
his life by remaining in England.
Priestley's contemporary, Henry Cavendish, led an entirely dif-
ferent kind of life. One of the wealthiest men in England, he was a
recluse and ma(le his great (discoveries in a laboratory he built in his
home. Cavendish avoided conversing with men as much as he could,
and he fled if he encountered a woman. Once, after running into a
maid on a stairway in his house, he had back stairs built for the maids
so that he would never have to run into them again.
The Swedish apothecary Carl Wilhelm Scheele also has a strong claim
to this distinction. See page 81.
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x
THE LAST SORCERERS
Antoine Lavoisier was a French chemist who had the misfortune
to live in revolutionary times, although he was no diehard loyalist.
On the contrary, while not politically active, he held views that were
very liberal for his day. Lavoisier died on the guillotine. In pre-
revolutionary days, he had been a frequent target of diatribes written
by the radical leader Tean-Pau] Marat. Marat, who once had scientific
ambitions, believed that Lavoisier blocked his attempts to gain elec-
tion to the French Academy of Sciences. Marat was assassinated be-
fore Lavoisier was executed, so he played no role in the latter's arrest
or trial, but it is significant that he had constantly attacked Lavoisier
for his role as a tax farmer. It was for his activities as a tax farmer that
Lavoisier was executed.
Dimitri Mendeleev was a bigamist who married a second time
alter paying an orthodox priest, who was later defrocked, to give him
a dispensation. Mendeleev had his long white hair and beard cut only
once a year, giving him a somewhat outlandish appearance. However,
his contemporaries admired him as the greatest Russian chemist.
Though the political situation in Russia caused him problems, he was
luckier if (lying at a certain time can be said to be lucky than
Lavoisier in that he passed away quietly before the communist
revolution.
Niels Bohr was a physicist, not a chemist. I (revote a chapter to his
life because he was the scientist who explained why Mendeleev's
periodic table had the properties it dill. Wi(lely known as a soccer
player in his youth, Bohr became the most influential physicist of the
first half of the twentieth century. His life, too, was touched by
political events. A Tew living in occupied Denmark, Bohr had to flee
the country to avoid arrest by the Nazis. In 1939 Bohr discovered a
theory that explained nuclear fission, and suggested that uranium
235 could be used to make a bomb. Though he played only a minor
role in the American atomic bomb project, Bohr was the first to
ponder the political implications of the bomb.
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PREFACE
X1
Other major figures discussed in the book include Paracelsus,
whose outrageous character and life could not possibly be summa-
rize(1 in a paragraph. Other figures played smaller roles: for example,
the German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz, whose interest in alchemy
eventually led to his involvement in the production of a new element,
phosphorus, from human urine, and Werner Heisenberg, Bohr's
friend and director of the German atomic bomb project. The story of
the development of chemistry is something like a play in that bit
players appear from time to time, contributing to the (levelopment of
the plot.
The chapters that follow are arranged in chronological order, with
the exception of Chapter 4, which discusses the discovery of new
chemical elements over the course of two centuries. I thought that I
could give a more coherent account if I put that material in a single
chapter rather than scattering it throughout the book.
The last chapter, which I have called an epilogue, is also some-
what different from the others. It is a condensed history of twentieth-
century particle physics. The search for an understanding of the
constituents of matter did not end with Bohr's explanation of the
properties of the periodic table after all. On the contrary, the quest
continued by being passed from the hands of the chemists into those
of the physicists. Because I chose to discuss this material within the
framework of a single chapter, I was forced to omit some of the details.
However, I think it sufficiently summarizes the paths that the
physicists followed once they took on the task of trying to determine
what the universe was made of
I would like to conclu(le by acknowle(lging that the idea for this
book was not my own. It was suggested to me by Erika Goldman, my
former editor at W.H. Freeman and Company. Left to my own devices
I wouldn't have thought of telling the tale that I did.
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