Mendeleyev's Dream: The Quest for the Elements - Hardcover

Strathern, Paul

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312262043 ISBN 13: 9780312262044

Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books, 2001

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author

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.

Reviews

One of the few things most of us remember from that long-ago high school chemistry class is the periodic table, with the elements laid out like cards in a game of solitaire, the alkali metals running down the left-hand side, the noble gases down the right, and so on. In this readable but flawed book, prolific author Strathern (Hawking and Black Holes; Crick, Watson and DNA; etc.) uses the creation of the periodic table by the great Russian scientist Dmitri Mendeleyev, who literally dreamed it up, to bookend a journey through the history of chemistry. The author's fascinating accounts of the peculiar early-modern "scientists" really closer to the medieval alchemists Paracelsus and Giordano Bruno (the latter Galileo's unlucky predecessor before the Inquisition) show how quackery can combine with real insight to make notable advances in science. But despite many elegantly written pages often filled with good information, much of the book seems facile and hurried, tarnished by statements that are only partly correct and by outright misstatements. (For example, playwright Christopher Marlowe could hardly have been involved in the Gunpowder Plot, since he was murdered 12 years earlier.) Strathern too frequently wanders off on overly extended tangents about historical figures like Sir Francis Bacon, certainly a man important to the history of science but not to the history of chemistry. A book just about Mendeleyev would have proved more useful and worthy of a place on bookshelves. Despite this work's many merits, Strathern's authorial alchemy hasn't managed to turn his base elements into gold. Illus.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Long smothered in the superstitions of alchemy, chemistry finally acquired the theoretical structure of a true science with the bold hypothesis of elemental periodicity first advanced by Dmitri Mendeleyev, an irascible Russian who claimed that it all came to him in a dream. But no mystical slumber could ever have prompted such a revelation without the prior wakeful labors of dozens of investigators. In a tale at once lively and far ranging, Strathern recounts the work of Mendeleyev's numerous predecessors--from Thales (who argued that all things come from water) to Cavendish (who gauged the strength of electrical charges by recording the pain they caused him). Strathern's account focuses on the discovery of concepts--explained for the nonscientist with merciful clarity--essential to Mendeleyev's vision, but it also explores the irreducible mysteries in the personalities of those who discovered the concepts. A book that brings lucidity to science while restoring human complexity to the scientists who do it: What more could a reader want? Bryce Christensen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Despite its title, this is not a biography of Dmitri Mendeleyev, the Russian scientist who formulated the Periodic Table of Elements. Rather, it is a lay reader's history of chemistry or, more broadly, scientific thought, from the ancient Greeks through the 19th century. Strathern's diverting style of writing fleshes out the scientists who labored to define what the elemental building blocks of the universe are. With 20/20 hindsight, he shows the misconceptions that took chemistry down unproductive paths and brings to light scientists whose surprising theoretical prescience and genius were unknown in their own time. Strathern's "Big Idea" series of scientific biography and his "Philosophy in 90 Minutes" series, both designed for the novice, prepared him well for the task of relating the personalities and philosophies of these elemental discoverers to the nonscientist. Recommended for public and academic libraries. Wade M. Lee, Univ. of Toledo Libs.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0312262043
• ISBN 13: 9780312262044
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320