The Art of Chemistry: Myths, Medicines and Materials

  • Arthur Greenberg
Wiley: 2003. 357 pp. £41.95, $59.95, €66.70

The Art of Chemistry is a companion to Arthur Greenberg's earlier book, A Chemical History Tour (Wiley, 2000), and again he offers us a selection from his unique collection of historical material. If you enjoyed the earlier book, which I did, then you will enjoy this as well. It should appeal to chemists, historians and artists, particularly those who are fascinated by alchemy and how this base science was transmuted into the gold of chemistry.

The 71 essays are lavishly illustrated with page after page of reproductions that capture the chemical mood of the time, with Greenberg providing the necessary commentary. A few chapters merely whet the appetite without satisfying it. The one entitled 'Secrets of a Lady Alchemist' concerns Marie Meurdrac, who was the first woman to write a book on chemistry, which was published in 1656, but the coverage is all too brief. So too is 'A Promising President', which gave me a glimpse of unexpected depths to former US president Herbert Hoover. He did a scholarly translation of a 1556 book by Georgius Agricola, De re metallica (Of Things Metallic), from Latin into English.

While those essays left me hungry for more, they are the exception — most of them provide a meaty meal. I particularly enjoyed the one on William Prout's hypothesis of 1815, in which he theorized that all elements are derived from hydrogen. This theory was seen as demonstrably wrong in the nineteenth century: if hydrogen's atomic weight is 1, how can chlorine's be 35.5? Nevertheless, his hypothesis explained why most atomic weights are integral numbers, and it was indeed prophetic. A century later, chemists learned that an element is identified by the number of protons in its nucleus and, as hydrogen's nucleus is a single proton, it can be seen as the element of the elements.

In a book that is largely pictures, one might expect the accompanying text to be merely an add-on, but The Art of Chemistry is well written and peppered with Greenberg's witty comments and cynical asides, providing light relief along the way, although some are more toe-curling than amusing. Sometimes his remarks require specialist knowledge, such as an understanding of baseball, because he likes to make comparisons between the achievements of great chemists and the giants of his favourite sport.

The more of the book I read, the more I kept on wanting to read, and indeed for me the more interesting essays come in the second half, culminating with the whimsically titled 'Section VIII (Some Fun)' with its articles on occult chemistry and cigarette cards of famous chemists. If your interest is alchemy then the first dozen or so essays in 'Section I (Spiritual and Mythological Roots)' and 'Section II (Stills, Cupels, and Weapons)' will be the main attraction.

In the 1950s, C. P. Snow wrote of 'two cultures' and the lack of communication between them, and it really did seem that the worlds of art and science were like oil and water: impossible to mix. They represent different, though equally valid, ways of looking at the world. But that should not prevent artists from producing works with scientific themes, or scientists from appreciating the work of artists. The two worlds have often drawn strength from each other and The Art of Chemistry proves that it can be done. I hope that it will encourage those who are currently struggling to meld the two.