The Last Sorcerers

The Last Sorcerers. The title font on the cover page is similar to my edition of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. It sounds like the title of a fantasy novel, but it’s actually about the history of chemistry. The cover art might have given it away – it juxtaposes an eighteenth century Alchemists painting by Pietro Longhi and a page showing Dalton’s atoms. (I use the latter in my class.) It’s also the last book by author Richard Morris, who writes books at the intersection of science and society. (Graphic from Amazon.)

The book consists of ten short chapters covering “the path from alchemy to the periodic table”. The writing is clear, crisp, and light. It doesn’t bog down in too many details – as history of science books are wont to do. Morris explains the key alchemical and scientific questions in very clear prose. While the book is pitched to a very general audience, scientists will also find enough that is engaging. What distinguishes it from other books on this subject is its focus on the interesting (and quirky) lives of the alchemist-scientists. I’m halfway through the book, just finishing up the entry on Joseph Priestley. Antoine Lavoisier is next, and I’m looking forward to Dalton, Mendeleev, and more. (If you want a more detailed and comprehensive history of alchemy, I suggest The Secrets of Alchemy by Lawrence Principe.

While I am familiar with many of the major characters in the book, I was delighted to learn a number of things new to me. Chapter 2 focuses on Paracelsus. I knew his theories and his bombastic name, Philipus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim. I did not know that he chose Aureolus as his own alchemical name, or that technically he had no legal right to the von Hohenheim title, his father being an illegitimate child. He also gave himself the name Paracelsus (meaning “greater than Celsus”), and in fact he thought he was greater than everyone else who came before him. Criticizing others was something he did often, although he was apparently a capable physician. He had to keep moving from town to town because he regularly angered prominent townfolk.

Chapter 3 focuses on Robert Boyle, famous for his book The Sceptical Chymist and Boyle’s Law – the latter is taught in introductory chemistry classes in the “Gases” chapter. I did not know that Boyle also wrote “religious romance” novels. Apparently his Seraphic Love was a hit during his time with nine editions and translations into other languages. Besides fiction he also wrote a number of theological treatises that led to him being “offered high positions in the Anglican Church more than once. Characteristically, he refused them…” Boyle was also an alchemist, and like other alchemists, these writings were in “a variety of ciphers and invented code words for different chemical substances or alchemical procedures. Like most other alchemists, he believed that if methods of preparing the Philosopher’s Stone became widely known, the results would be catastrophic.”

Last week, as I was reworking my General Chemistry course, I wrote up a section on atomic line spectra. Shown above is an example from an older website that I like because the accompanying information is both useful and interesting information. The hydrogen line spectrum, in particular, played a crucial role in discovering the quantum nature of electrons in atoms. Also, each element in the Periodic Table has its own unique “fingerprint” spectrum, and this led to the discovery of new elements. I had included the discovery of helium in my lecture notes, but I had forgotten Robert Bunsen’s discovery of cesium (“sky blue” from the Latin caesius) and rubidium (“dark red” from the Latin rubideus) from the spectral lines. Yes, he’s the eponym of the Bunsen burner, and his collaboration with Gustav Kirchoff led to a plethora of new discoveries. Interestingly, Bunsen finally isolated the very reactive cesium and rubidium by commissioning “a chemical factory near Heidelberg to spend several weeks evaporating and chemically treating some 12,000 gallons of Durkheim water”. This water came from the Durkheim mineral springs that Bunsen had first analyzed. The process yielded 10 grams of rubidium and 7 grams of cesium.

I should include cesium and rubidium when I talk about spectroscopy since I’ve used this old Brainiacs YouTube video in a number of my classes. Don’t try it at home! Reading about the many experiments on gases, and how integral they were to the rebirth of atomic theory, I’m wondering if I should cover the “Gases” chapter differently. It normally shows up at the end of the semester, partly because of the textbook we’re using, but I’m wondering whether I should split it up and sprinkle the topics across the semester. (I did this with Electrochemistry for the second semester in a similar situation.)

The book also made me think about how the first Harry Potter title was changed from the British Philosopher’s Stone to the American Sorcerer’s Stone. For many years, I thought that Philosopher’s Stone was the much better choice because of alchemical history. But now I think that Sorcerer’s Stone isn’t a bad choice. The cast of characters in Morris’ book both exhibited the traits of natural philosophers and alchemical sorcerers. In that time period, magic and science were not so different from each other. I wonder what they would have thought about our clear-cut distinctions. In any case, for more on the colorful lives of the early scientists, I recommend reading The Last Sorcerers in full. I’m looking forward to reading more vignettes in the second half of the book that I can use in my classes.