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In this elegant, erudite, but entertaining
book, Paul Strathern, the award-winning novelist and expositor
of complex ideas, unravels the dramatic history of chemistry
through the quest for the elements.
Framing this history is the life story of
the nineteenth-century Russian scientist Dmitri Mendeleyev,
who fell asleep at his desk and awoke after conceiving the
periodic table in a dream -- the template upon which modern
chemistry is founded and the formulation of which marked
chemistry's coming of age as a science. From ancient philosophy
through medieval alchemy to the splitting of the atom, this
is the true story of the birth of chemistry and the role
of one man's dream.
Paul Strathern was born in London in
1940. He studied physics, chemistry, and math at Trinity
College, Dublin, before switching to philosophy. He is the
author of several novels, including A Season in Abyssinia,
which won a Somerset Maugham prize, and two highly successful
series of short introductory books, Philosophers in
90 Minutes and The Big Idea: Scientists Who Changed
the World. Paul Strathern lectures in philosophy and
science at Kingston University.
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