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The Magic Furnace: The Search for the Origins of Atoms
"Every breath you take contains atoms forged in the blistering furnaces deep inside stars. Every flower you pick contains atoms blasted into space by stellar explosions that blazed brighter than a billion suns." Thus begins The Magic Furnace , an eloquent, extraordinary account of how
scientists unraveled the mystery of atoms, and helped to explain the dawn of life itself.
The historic search for atoms and their stellar origins is truly one of the greatest detective stories of science. In effect, it offers two epics the birth of atoms in the Big Bang and the evolution of stars and how they work. Neither could be told without the other, for the stars
contain the key to unlocking the secret of atoms, and the atoms the solution to the secret of the stars. Marcus Chown leads readers through the major theories and experiments that propelled the search for atomic understanding, with engaging characterizations of the major atomic thinkers-from
Democritus in ancient Greece to Binning and Rohrer in twentieth-century New York. He clarifies the science, explaining with enthusiasm the sequence of breakthroughs that proved the existence of atoms as the "alphabet of nature" and the discovery of subatomic particles and atomic energy potential.
From there, he engagingly chronicles the leaps of insight that eventually revealed the elements, the universe, our world, and ourselves to be a product of two ultimate the explosion of the Big Bang and the interior of stars such as supernovae and red giants.
Chown successfully makes these massive concepts accessible for students, professionals, and science enthusiasts. His story sheds light on all of us, for in essence, we are all stardust.
scientists unraveled the mystery of atoms, and helped to explain the dawn of life itself.
The historic search for atoms and their stellar origins is truly one of the greatest detective stories of science. In effect, it offers two epics the birth of atoms in the Big Bang and the evolution of stars and how they work. Neither could be told without the other, for the stars
contain the key to unlocking the secret of atoms, and the atoms the solution to the secret of the stars. Marcus Chown leads readers through the major theories and experiments that propelled the search for atomic understanding, with engaging characterizations of the major atomic thinkers-from
Democritus in ancient Greece to Binning and Rohrer in twentieth-century New York. He clarifies the science, explaining with enthusiasm the sequence of breakthroughs that proved the existence of atoms as the "alphabet of nature" and the discovery of subatomic particles and atomic energy potential.
From there, he engagingly chronicles the leaps of insight that eventually revealed the elements, the universe, our world, and ourselves to be a product of two ultimate the explosion of the Big Bang and the interior of stars such as supernovae and red giants.
Chown successfully makes these massive concepts accessible for students, professionals, and science enthusiasts. His story sheds light on all of us, for in essence, we are all stardust.
240 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1999
19 people are currently reading
469 people want to read
About the author
Marcus Chown
31 books238 followersMarcus Chown is an award-winning writer and broadcaster. Formerly a radio astronomer at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, he is currently cosmology consultant of the weekly science magazine New Scientist. He is the author of the bestselling Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You, The Never Ending Days of Being Dead and The Magic Furnace. He also wrote The Solar System, the bestselling app for iPad, which won the Future Book Award 2011. Marcus Chown has also written a work for children, Felicity Frobisher and the Three-Headed Aldebaran Dust Devil.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews
January 22, 2016
I was impressed to read this book.
the theme ;
The history of nuclear physics is written systematically.
It is composed of the elements necessary to human beings by the supernova explosion.
I recommend the book .
Who are interested in the book?
the people want to read who are interested in astronomy, know the origin of universe ,
human being.
it is the brilliant story of universe and human being.
the theme ;
The history of nuclear physics is written systematically.
It is composed of the elements necessary to human beings by the supernova explosion.
I recommend the book .
Who are interested in the book?
the people want to read who are interested in astronomy, know the origin of universe ,
human being.
it is the brilliant story of universe and human being.
May 17, 2019
Definitivno nije za one sa apsolutno nimalo znanja o atomima. Ipak, pisana je laganim stilom, istorijat otkrića je uradjen baš kako treba, bez mnogo vrdanja sa strane od centralne teme knjige. Uživao sam.
January 31, 2016
This book is one of my favorite books that I read!!!
October 1, 2019
This is one of my all time fave books. I come back to it every few years because more than the story of how we discovered atoms, it's the story of humanity's intellectual journey into the light. Full of anecdotes; it is just a startling homage to the human mind at its best.
February 24, 2010
well, you need a science education to begin to read this, but then it's fantastic! The best science book I've read. Felt like I was reading a racy detective thriller, and yes I do still remember much of what he said, so thank you Marcus.
July 17, 2019
Captivating, informative, demanding, but highly readable
The title is an allusion to the dream of the alchemists of old who sought a magic kiln in which to transform base metals into gold. That dream remained intact until the discovery in the twentieth century of how the elements are actually built up from hydrogen and exactly what kind of "magic furnace" would be required to turn base metals into gold. In a most engaging narrative, science writer Marcus Chown tells that fascinating story through the lives and ideas of the scientists who made the discoveries.
Chown begins, as one must, with the Greeks and Democritus who opined, "...in reality there are only atoms and the void." Chown shows how it was impossible for the Greeks without the scientific method to go any further than Democritus's intuition. But Chown does not dwell on the alchemy but ratchets us directly to modern science and the growing realization that "Atoms Are Not the Smallest Things" (Chapter Two), and that therefore "it must be possible to transform an atom of one element into an atom of another." (p. 21)
And with that, the race was on to account for how hydrogen became helium which became, through crucibles unimaginable to man, carbon, iron and eventually the heaviest elements. The story culminates in the work of Fred Hoyle, Margaret and Geoffrey Burbidge, and Willy Fowler who explained the nuclear processes operating inside stars and supernovae. Chown finishes with a chapter on the discovery of the cosmic background radiation, the "afterglow of creation" which confirmed how helium was manufactured in the Big Bang, and a chapter on how the elements are strewn into space and end up in Population I stars and eventually in our bodies. There is a Glossary and a Selected Bibliography.
The value of this book lies not only in the fascinating story told but in the magical way that Chown is able to painlessly teach us a little chemistry and physics along the way. I learned more about the nature of atoms and the various forces in nature in these pages, almost incidentally, than I have in any other single book. So intrigued was I in learning more that I turned to the Periodic Table of the Elements as I read the text.
But Chown's style is not didactic. Instead he illuminates the personalities and the flow of ideas. We see Marie Currie with her radiation swollen fingers and Fred Hoyle truant at the back of the local cinema teaching himself to read. We see how the vision of meteorites falling into the sun became the vision of the sun falling in upon itself, shrinking and, as the elements got closer and closer together, heating up, and how that idea coursed after some meandering into the discovery of atomic energy. But perhaps the most beautiful "turn" (as in a poetic change of perception, as in a sonnet) in the book is on page 107 where Chown's writes about the sameness of all the atoms of an element, and then suddenly asks, thinking about the mysterious behavior evidenced by the phenomenon of the half-life: "How could radium atoms all be the same yet behave differently?" This question leads directly to the uncertainty principle and quantum mechanics.
There is an implicit sense of warning in the book about the limitations of humans doing science. Thus the American geologist Thomas Chamberlain is quoted on page 54 as saying, "There is perhaps no beguilement more insidious and dangerous than an elaborate and elegant mathematical process built upon unfortified premises." He was critiquing Lord Kelvin, but might his words not apply to more recent theories, such as that of one-dimensional strings? And on page 65 it is recounted that Auguste Comte "deemed it self-evident that we would never be able to study" the chemical composition of the stars. Two years after his death in 1857 thanks to the unlikely technique of spectroscopy we were doing just that. Indeed, as Chown reports on page 67, helium was discovered, through a reading of its spectrum, on the sun before it was discovered on the earth! By the way, Chown's material on spectroscopy is fascinating and helped me to a better understanding of how the process works and how the black lines in spectrums of light reveal the composition of the stars.
Chown has the ability to engage the reader in scientific ideas, perhaps in part because of the unique way he sometimes puts things. For example on page 79 he writes about the resistance encountered by an object as it approached the speed of light. He states, "The only conceivable source of such resistance was a body's mass." However, what I thought was, mass cannot find resistance by itself. There must be something in the very fabric of spacetime that is providing the resistance. It is not enough to posit "inertia" since that really explains nothing. I believe there is still something fundamental that we do not understand about the relationship between the speed of light and the nature of matter and energy.
Chown sometimes uses the language and assumptions of the times he is writing about. For example on page 96 he speaks of "the electrons which flitted about an atomic nucleus like planets round the sun," an analogy now considered somewhat misleading (a "cloud" is preferred, I believe), but in recalling it, we are again forced to imagine what an atom might look like if we could somehow "see" it.
Most amusing story: Austrian physicist Fritz Houtermans making up dreams to tell Sigmund Freud! (p. 110)
Best steam of consciousness leading to insight: Fred Hoyle musing on the atomic bomb project about which he had only second-hand and circumstantial evidence. (pp. 159-160)
Best speculation: In answer to "Where are they?", Fermi's famous question about extra-terrestrials, Chown proposes that they came and went long before the sun even shone. (p. 215)
--Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is”
The title is an allusion to the dream of the alchemists of old who sought a magic kiln in which to transform base metals into gold. That dream remained intact until the discovery in the twentieth century of how the elements are actually built up from hydrogen and exactly what kind of "magic furnace" would be required to turn base metals into gold. In a most engaging narrative, science writer Marcus Chown tells that fascinating story through the lives and ideas of the scientists who made the discoveries.
Chown begins, as one must, with the Greeks and Democritus who opined, "...in reality there are only atoms and the void." Chown shows how it was impossible for the Greeks without the scientific method to go any further than Democritus's intuition. But Chown does not dwell on the alchemy but ratchets us directly to modern science and the growing realization that "Atoms Are Not the Smallest Things" (Chapter Two), and that therefore "it must be possible to transform an atom of one element into an atom of another." (p. 21)
And with that, the race was on to account for how hydrogen became helium which became, through crucibles unimaginable to man, carbon, iron and eventually the heaviest elements. The story culminates in the work of Fred Hoyle, Margaret and Geoffrey Burbidge, and Willy Fowler who explained the nuclear processes operating inside stars and supernovae. Chown finishes with a chapter on the discovery of the cosmic background radiation, the "afterglow of creation" which confirmed how helium was manufactured in the Big Bang, and a chapter on how the elements are strewn into space and end up in Population I stars and eventually in our bodies. There is a Glossary and a Selected Bibliography.
The value of this book lies not only in the fascinating story told but in the magical way that Chown is able to painlessly teach us a little chemistry and physics along the way. I learned more about the nature of atoms and the various forces in nature in these pages, almost incidentally, than I have in any other single book. So intrigued was I in learning more that I turned to the Periodic Table of the Elements as I read the text.
But Chown's style is not didactic. Instead he illuminates the personalities and the flow of ideas. We see Marie Currie with her radiation swollen fingers and Fred Hoyle truant at the back of the local cinema teaching himself to read. We see how the vision of meteorites falling into the sun became the vision of the sun falling in upon itself, shrinking and, as the elements got closer and closer together, heating up, and how that idea coursed after some meandering into the discovery of atomic energy. But perhaps the most beautiful "turn" (as in a poetic change of perception, as in a sonnet) in the book is on page 107 where Chown's writes about the sameness of all the atoms of an element, and then suddenly asks, thinking about the mysterious behavior evidenced by the phenomenon of the half-life: "How could radium atoms all be the same yet behave differently?" This question leads directly to the uncertainty principle and quantum mechanics.
There is an implicit sense of warning in the book about the limitations of humans doing science. Thus the American geologist Thomas Chamberlain is quoted on page 54 as saying, "There is perhaps no beguilement more insidious and dangerous than an elaborate and elegant mathematical process built upon unfortified premises." He was critiquing Lord Kelvin, but might his words not apply to more recent theories, such as that of one-dimensional strings? And on page 65 it is recounted that Auguste Comte "deemed it self-evident that we would never be able to study" the chemical composition of the stars. Two years after his death in 1857 thanks to the unlikely technique of spectroscopy we were doing just that. Indeed, as Chown reports on page 67, helium was discovered, through a reading of its spectrum, on the sun before it was discovered on the earth! By the way, Chown's material on spectroscopy is fascinating and helped me to a better understanding of how the process works and how the black lines in spectrums of light reveal the composition of the stars.
Chown has the ability to engage the reader in scientific ideas, perhaps in part because of the unique way he sometimes puts things. For example on page 79 he writes about the resistance encountered by an object as it approached the speed of light. He states, "The only conceivable source of such resistance was a body's mass." However, what I thought was, mass cannot find resistance by itself. There must be something in the very fabric of spacetime that is providing the resistance. It is not enough to posit "inertia" since that really explains nothing. I believe there is still something fundamental that we do not understand about the relationship between the speed of light and the nature of matter and energy.
Chown sometimes uses the language and assumptions of the times he is writing about. For example on page 96 he speaks of "the electrons which flitted about an atomic nucleus like planets round the sun," an analogy now considered somewhat misleading (a "cloud" is preferred, I believe), but in recalling it, we are again forced to imagine what an atom might look like if we could somehow "see" it.
Most amusing story: Austrian physicist Fritz Houtermans making up dreams to tell Sigmund Freud! (p. 110)
Best steam of consciousness leading to insight: Fred Hoyle musing on the atomic bomb project about which he had only second-hand and circumstantial evidence. (pp. 159-160)
Best speculation: In answer to "Where are they?", Fermi's famous question about extra-terrestrials, Chown proposes that they came and went long before the sun even shone. (p. 215)
--Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is”
October 21, 2025
This is a very nice, popularized book telling the story of how we figured out what matter is made of and where the chemical elements around us come from. It starts with the initial ideas of the atom in Ancient Greece, through the beginning of physics and chemistry and the important discoveries made there, and out into the universe, looking for clues in the stars and the beginning of time. It’s wonderful to get this full story in one book.
Chown writes in an understandable and engaging way, with an appropriate amount of detail if you want to delve a bit into the subject, and get some scientific understanding of it.
I haven’t read other popular books on this particular subject, so I don’t have anything to compare it to. But I very much enjoyed this one.
Chown writes in an understandable and engaging way, with an appropriate amount of detail if you want to delve a bit into the subject, and get some scientific understanding of it.
I haven’t read other popular books on this particular subject, so I don’t have anything to compare it to. But I very much enjoyed this one.
October 24, 2018
Excellent book giving the history of our understanding of atoms and how they are synthesised, and hence our understanding of stars. I've been interested in this subject for a number of years and have not previously found a book that gives the right level of detail, but here it is. It also explained something I'd never understood about spectral lines and I particularly enjoyed the section dominated by the account of Hoyle's work, as he is almost invariably remembered just for resisting the concept of the Big Bang rather than for his great discoveries.
September 8, 2017
Excellent book. Truly inspirational. Made me feel rather insignificant. Subject matter that I had not reflected on recently. Obviously was taught most of it at some point, but an amazing refresher. Rutherford blows my mind yet again. Marcus Chown did a great job in weaving it all together like a "novel".
December 17, 2021
Reads like a detective novel, as we follow the meandering double path of physics and astronomy as they circle around the great mystery of the Origins of Matter. Only complaint is that I highlighted a couple of the misteps in my impetuousness, only to find that they were a feint for a further discovery.
August 17, 2025
THE MAGIC FURNACE introduces us to the building blocks of life as they materialize on this earth. It also introduces us to the great contributors to the history of science.
THE MAGIC FURNACE is a wonderful book that can inspire readers of every age. If I were teaching science, I would certainly assign this book. It is tops on my Christmas list for sure.
THE MAGIC FURNACE is a wonderful book that can inspire readers of every age. If I were teaching science, I would certainly assign this book. It is tops on my Christmas list for sure.
November 7, 2017
This was a very readable book. Marcus Chown presented a complex story of the formation of the atoms of different elements in the universe in a very clear and understandable narrative. Highly recommended.
March 5, 2018
What a brilliant book this is ! This should be included in the school curriculum. For the students interested in Physics (particularly Astronomy), this book gives a good overview of what they are heading into.
December 23, 2020
Really enjoyed reading this book, I have read similar books on the same topic and find each book has something else to add. Generally there is a good return for reading this book as I hope I have created more neurons or pathways in my otherwise lazy brain.
October 26, 2025
The more it gets into the minutiae of nuclear reactions the drier and more impenetrable. At the core it's an interesting story, but I feel like there could have been a bit more colour to it. A diagram or two may have helped.
November 2, 2019
My absolute favourite non-fiction book. So informative and educational.
March 7, 2020
*review to be posted soon*
May 2, 2020
Superb exploration of the process of nucleosynthesis - an absolute joy to read and I hope to read it again.
November 10, 2010
The Magic Furnace is a magic book. The story of physics, astrophysics and astronomy is a tale that Chown begins back in ancient Greece and is the search for the origin of atoms. The two thousand year investigative odyssey of what everything is made of and where atoms came from and how they were made, from the Universe rich hydrogen and helium, the light elements, all the way to the heavy atoms is a mind blower. I enjoyed the authors previous work 'The Afterglow of Creation', and I think Magic Furnace is even better. From the Greek philosopher Democritus, back when Alexander the Great was on his rampage, all the way to the L.H.C. with who discovered what and how is set out and explained in such an easy to understand way, Marcus Chown removes the mystery and has to be congratulated.
As we look out into the universe and identify the many accidents of physics and astronomy that have worked together to our benefit, it almost seems as if the universe must have known that we were coming.
Or we have on our hands a multiverse, where we inhabit the fortunate carbon rich 'one-off'.
As we look out into the universe and identify the many accidents of physics and astronomy that have worked together to our benefit, it almost seems as if the universe must have known that we were coming.
Or we have on our hands a multiverse, where we inhabit the fortunate carbon rich 'one-off'.
October 24, 2010
An exhilarating account of the discoveries that led to our understanding of the nature of matter and how it is made - the origin of atoms and stars. All the key players are here: Eddington, Hoyle, Gamow, Baade, Rutherford, and others. As with Simon Singh's more recent Big Bang (which I enjoyed slightly more, but this is still worthy of 5 stars), the author draws us into the story of discovery alongside the technical detail - he takes what might otherwise have been quite a dry subject matter ("helium-4 fuses with carbon-13 to make oxygen-16 and a leftover neutron") and somehow really brings it to life. This is well-written and progresses smoothly from one chapter to the next. My favourite of Chown's books.
November 12, 2015
One of the best books on physics that Ive ever read! And it is not only a book on physics, its an written as a thrilling detective story. It covers so many topics from nuclear physics to astrophysics and links them chronologically in a natural way. I feel like I learned more about physics and its recent history from this book than 5 years of studying physics in university.
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May 5, 2010アインシュタインの相対性理論を軽ーく書いてあるところが、一番面白かった。っていうかその他意味不明。
しかも、その一番面白かったところの内容を既に忘れてる私。
ということで、ratingはなしです。
しかも、その一番面白かったところの内容を既に忘れてる私。
ということで、ratingはなしです。
March 28, 2010
Utterly fascinating summary of the voyage of discovery of atomic physics, revealing the source of all we see around us.
July 5, 2017
Awesome peek into history of great discoveries around atom, its nuclear structure and the source of Sun's energy. Easily readable and actually really exciting.
January 2, 2017
Finished sometime in summer 2016. Excellent book with much interesting historical material. May need to read again.
February 22, 2013
Fascinating book, although a wee bit drawn out.
February 27, 2016
It is a good book to start with during a degree in nuclear physics
June 9, 2017
Despite treating a subject that is considered complicated and hard to follow this books it's amazingly light and easy to read. it has its moments when you need to follow carefully over the discoveries as it takes about them but you don't need any knowledge of chemistry or physics to understand it. Even if it's not a fiction book it has a great storyline and even a greater ending. I would really recommend it to anyone who has a slight interest in the world of atoms. if not the physics part, you might be interested about the way the most of the great discoveries in this area were done using very smart way of thinking.
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August 11, 2017The Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman wrote that the shortest sentence containing the most information is 'Everything is made of atoms'. Marcus Chown's wonderful book explains how the elements are forged inside stars and then blown out into the cosmos to end up in us. The book is beautifully written, my only minor criticism is that the text, at just a few points, cries out for some illustrations.
November 24, 2017
utterly fascinating..even for a total layman such as myself...very well told......look at the world around you with new wonder
Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews