The Chemistry Book: From Gunpowder to Graphene, 250 Milestones in the History of Chemistry

by Derek B. Lowe

Con este libro viajar cronolgicamente a travs de 250 hitos de la historia de la qumica; desde el ao 500 000 a.C. hasta el presente, con una mirada hacia el futuro. El Libro de la qumica empieza con la formacin de cristales, y contina en el tiempo observando el avance del conocimiento sobre la qumica, con un desarrollo vertiginoso. Durante este viaje, el autor trata temas tan diversos como la toxicologa, la teora daltoniana del autnomo, fluidos supercrticos, el daguerrotipo y la ley general de los gases, sin olvidar el abono de fosfato, la difraccin de rayos X, la reaccin de Maillard o la estructura del ADN. Con un entusiasmo contagioso, el autor le llevar al mundo fascinante de la qumica, cuya influencia en nuestra vida diaria es enorme." Un cientfico en su laboratorio no es solo un tcnico, sino adems un nio que se enfrenta a los fenmenos de la naturaleza, tan impresionante como los cuentos de misterio".

Genres: Science, Chemistry, Nonfiction, History, Reference, Popular Science, History Of Science

528 pages, Hardcover

First published January 5, 2016

Reviews

[Gavin · Rating 4 out of 5]

As every 101 book tells us, chemistry is the central science, that gets inbetween biology and physics. That makes Derek Lowe the central scientist.

[Tinaliza · Rating 4 out of 5]

Using this book as a filler for a middle school history course in an attempt to tie in history and science. Love the content and layout but do wish the index offered more keywords to the periodic table elements without me having to dig up scientists names. I was able to tie in notes on my own but would have loved the time saver.

[Graeme · Rating 5 out of 5]

This magnificent book lists 250 of the most intriguing and significant advances and events in chemistry, on a timeline starting in 500,000 BCE and running right past us to 2030, when the author, Derek Lowe, anticipates that someone will solve artificial photosynthesis. This aptly periodic approach is perfectly structured, generously attributing credit to contributors to each advance, and describing both the nature and the significance of the breakthrough. I loved that humble inventions like the magnetic stirrer and the rotary evaporator found a place alongside the abstract and sophisticated, such as click triazoles and dipolar cycloadditions. Lowe's descriptions are lucid, engaging, and threaded with interesting anecdotes, and all of them reflect both his real-life experience as a chemist and his deep love of the field, which I have shared since I was eleven. Every description is accompanied by an apposite, full-bleed photograph or illustration on the facing page. The elegance, rhythm, and beauty of the layouts complement the fascination of the subject matter.

If you love chemistry, in all its breadth and depth, you will love this book. The Sterling Milestones series also includes The Engineering Book, The Physics Book, The Biology Book, The Law Book, and more. I hope to read them all.

[Chintushig Tumenbayar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Химийн шинжлэх ухааны шилдэг 250 нээлтүүдийг сонирхон танилцсан минь адал явдал дүүрэн аялал болно чинээ санасангүй.

Цэнхэр өнгийг яаж гаргаж авсныг мэдсэнээр 16, 17р зуунд уран зурагт цэнхэр өнгө орох нь ямар зардалтай байсан талаар.

Бууны дар хэрхэн гаргаж авсан яагаад энэ нь дэлхийг өөрчилсөн талаар хожим олон зүйлтэй холбогдох мэдээлэл ойлголттой боллоо.

[William Schram · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book explores the world of chemistry in an accessible and easily digestible format. By putting down only the landmark findings of the field, it avoids being too long or heavily technical. Along the way, we get to see the names and faces of some of the luminaries of the field: Pauling, Crick, and Watson come to mind, but there are many others. At the end of the book are suggestions for further reading and an index. The book may show 250 Milestones, but it went by pretty quickly.

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even though I have a degree in chemistry and teach it (along with organic chemistry), there are loads of chemical history that you simply don't learn in school. This book does a great job in delivering important, bite sized pieces that can be researched further if one desires. It would be a great read for my students.

[Robert Woodman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book. Very accessible for the lay reader. Very enjoyable for the professional scientist to read. 5 out of 5 stars.

[Karel Baloun · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many fascinating stories, all in a single page, easy to understand format. The many memorable, beautiful compelling images were a treat. At a few pages a day, this is a smart book to have in a bathroom or on a coffee table.

I learned a lot, but I did miss the organized, cumulative structure of typical science textbooks.

[Jung · Rating 1 out of 5]

[ i never liked chemistry anyway ]

Take a tour through some of chemistry’s most important milestones.

You don’t need a chemistry degree to know that this field is chock full of fascinating characters, unexpected turns of events, and plenty of dramatic discoveries. Sometimes these events can be ironic, like the invention of dynamite, and other times, they can be tragic, like the discovery of radium’s true nature.

While we can’t take you through each of the 250 events in The Chemistry Book, we’ll treat you to some memorable highlights and surprising details. These discoveries and landmark moments span human history’s high and low points – events that we’ll continue to celebrate and events that have served as regrettable warnings for future generations.

---

Human achievements in chemistry started in the Bronze Age.

Our planet has always been home to amazing chemical processes. Take the two-story-tall crystals that pack caves in Mexico – the Cueva de Los Cristales. These gigantic pillars are a mind-boggling example of what happens when the common mineral gypsum is submerged in water that’s being heated up by magma, and then spends centuries cooling down during an ice age. The caves look like something out of a bizarre sci-fi movie. But they’re real, stunning, larger-than-life examples of chemical reactions that needed no human involvement.

It’s hard to say what the first human chemical discovery was. Was it the first man-made fire? Or the first time someone used a plant to help heal a wound?

While copper was already being used for some basic tools, around 3300 BCE, we found a better, stronger, and more durable material in bronze.

Essentially, bronze is what happens when tin is added to copper. And what made this combination possible was travel and trade. Around 2000 BCE, tin from Cornwall, in southwestern England, began to show up in the Mediterranean. Eventually, some of the more daring metal workers in Mesopotamia began to experiment with the materials they had, including lead, nickel, silver – and copper. Eventually, bronze was born.

Over time, the Greeks would add more lead to the mixture to make bronze easier to work with, and then zinc would be added to make brass. Despite the changes throughout history, bronze has always been the metal of choice for bells, and it can still be found in the cymbals on your standard drum kit.

Around 1300 BCE, the Bronze Age transitioned into the Iron Age. But this wasn’t because iron was seen as a superior metal. Bronze is, in fact, harder and far less prone to corrosion. Really, what iron had going for it was availability.

Early iron technology involved heating charcoal and iron ore, producing a lump of crude smelted iron in the bottom of the furnace. Impurities were then, quite literally, hammered out. This has always been a labor-intensive process and one that requires a lot of forced air to keep furnaces burning at high temperatures. To get such conditions, it’s believed that some smelting operations were seasonal, in order to take advantage of recurring monsoon-like conditions.

But despite all this, iron smelting capabilities quickly spread, though it’s possible that locations as far removed as India and sub-Saharan Africa developed the technology independently from each other.

---

Ancient chemists advanced purification and refinement techniques, often with hopes for gold and eternal life.

We’ll never know who the first chemist was, but we do have a name for the earliest documented chemist: Tapputi. According to a tablet dated at around 1200 BCE, Tapputi was the name of a Babylonian woman who made perfume out of ingredients like myrrh and balsam. She also purified her concoctions by heating them and collecting the vapors. So, we can consider 1200 BCE the first documented reference to a purification process involving distillation and filtration.

Like iron smelting, many cultures knew how to make perfume. But when it comes to other areas and technologies, secrets did abound in the ancient world.

Up until 550 BCE, people like the Egyptians were simply using water to clear away debris and collect bits of gold. Then came King Croesus of Lydia, and a new technique for refining gold. Using a gold-silver alloy called electrum, Lydians refined pure gold.

The exact methods of their refinement are still being pieced together by historians and archeologists. Since this process was most likely an undocumented Lydian secret, much is still unknown. But one thing’s for sure: they made the most of what they had. With the use of molten lead and salt, they created coinage. The process may have diluted the gold content, but by stamping the coins with mythological figures, heroes, and animals, they established a value that brought King Croesus a tidy and steady profit.

Let’s fast forward to the start of the Han Dynasty, around 210 BCE. Here we find early use of mercury, a strange liquid metal that didn’t need any refining. The first to use large amounts of mercury in a significant way was Qin Shi Huang, the legendary “first emperor of China.” You may be familiar with the large underground army of soldiers, molded out of terra-cotta, that the emperor had made for his tomb. Well, that tomb also consisted of a scale replica of his palaces, complete with a miniature river of flowing mercury.

Ironically enough, Qin Shi Huang may have used medicines containing mercury in a misguided attempt at immortality. We now know that mercury is indeed poisonous, especially in compounds that allow the body to more readily absorb it. Sadly, it would be a long time before this was known, and mercury continued to be a medicinal ingredient for some time.

---

Good and virtuous intentions can sometimes lead to unintended consequences.

While ibn Hayyan was trying to turn iron into gold, alchemists in China were also attempting to transmute metals. It’s likely that these efforts and the continued quest for life-extending elixirs brought them something else entirely: gunpowder.

The first sign of gunpowder comes in a Taoist text, dated around 850 AD. By 1044, China’s military had multiple recipes for the explosive product.

One could almost say it was just a matter of time, because two of the main ingredients, sulfur, and charcoal, were sure to be around most alchemist labs. The missing ingredient is the oxidizer: potassium nitrate. This could have been added by using the mineral niter, otherwise known as saltpeter, or it could have been found in caves, around the edges of bat guano droppings. Whatever the case, once discovered, its explosive potential would have been immediate.

The nickname for gunpowder eventually became “Chinese snow,” and it would stay a military secret for a long time, until the expansions of the Mongol empire spread this secret to other world empires. By 1326, the first European-made guns would forever change the rules of warfare.

Of course, gunpowder did not turn out to be a life-extending elixir, but by the sixteenth century, some advancements in this direction were being made. In 1538, the field of toxicology got off the ground thanks to the efforts of Swiss alchemist and philosopher, Paracelsus. While most alchemists were still fixated on making gold and silver, Paracelsus said his intentions were “to consider only what virtue and power may lie in medicines.”

For his part, Paracelsus was among the first to recognize the effects outside agents may be having on human health. His study of miners led him to suggest that toxic vapors, and not evil mountain spirits, might be causing their lung problems.

In 1540, the German botanist and physician Valerius Cordus mixed ethyl alcohol with sulfuric acid to come up with diethyl ether. That same year, Paracelsus published a treatise noting the effect that ether fumes had on animals, causing them to become unconscious, which he thought would be put to human use in time.

He was right: in the 1840s, ether became the first surgical anesthetic, as well as the basis for “ether frolics” among surgical students.

---

In the seventeenth century, world-changing developments preceded a shift to hard science.

Another important milestone in the history of medicinal chemistry arrived in 1631. That year, Jesuits had returned to Rome after a journey to the New World, and they brought back an incredible new medicine. It was a compound derived from the bark of South American cinchona trees. The medicine would come to be known as quinine.

Rome was suffering from countless cases of malaria every year, but people had yet to link these cases to the city’s mosquito-infested swamps. Most people linked the cause to “bad vapors,” which is what mal-aria actually means.

The Quechua people of Bolivia and Peru had been using the tree bark to treat symptoms such as shivering and chills – two of the markers of malaria. And while quinine works as a muscle relaxant, it later proved to be excellent at fighting malaria. It turns out the medicine goes after the malaria parasites directly. What it does exactly remains something of a mystery, but quinine was a game-changer.

Between 1620 and 1630, Spain became aware of quinine’s benefits through Jesuit missionaries. European colonial powers could now venture forth with protection against the deadly elements of the uncharted world.

But on the positive side, quinine became a much-studied compound. For centuries, those trying to synthesize the medicine helped to advance the field of organic chemistry. After German chemist Paul Rabe partially synthesized it in 1918, American chemists William von Eggers Doering and Robert Burns Woodward became the first to achieve total synthesis in 1944.

In 1661, Robert Boyle published The Sceptical Chymist, which effectively laid the foundation for modern chemistry. Instead of looking at things from the classical viewpoint, which involved the Greek concept of the four elements – air, earth, fire, and water – Boyle advanced the theory of atoms as the foundational component of all elements. He also proposed that the movement and reactions on the atomic level could explain the world around us.

Many of his predictions would end up being spot on. And fortunately for Boyle, the Age of Enlightenment was just getting started, and a new era of science and reason was ready to embrace his ideas.

---

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, chemical synthesis continued to advance.

If you’ve ever put paint onto a canvas, there’s a good chance you’ve heard of the color Prussian blue. But you may be surprised to find out how colorful the history of Prussian blue is, and the memorable role it played in the history of chemistry.

Prior to 1700, blue was actually a rare color in European paintings. This is because it was super expensive. The only reliable source of blue oil paint came from lapis lazuli stones that were sourced from Afghanistan. At one time, there was an “Egyptian blue,” but the recipe for this color was lost somewhere in the collapse of the Roman empire. So, if a figure in a painting was decorated with the color blue, you could be sure that the person was of the highest status.

Then, in 1706, German dye maker Johann Jacob Diesbach made a surprising discovery. He was trying to create a new red pigment by using cochineal, which comes from crushed up beetles. But since the reagents he was using were contaminated, Diesbach ended up with blue instead of red. Soon, oil paints with the name Prussian blue and Berliner blue were being sold.

But that’s not the end of the story. While the basic recipe for Prussian blue was leaked to the Royal Society of London in 1724, breaking down the chemistry behind the substance was much more difficult. In fact, it was over 250 years later, in the 1970s, that the entire chemical profile of Prussian blue was fully understood.

Like quinine, this challenge was a boon for organic chemistry. Along the way, it yielded hydrogen cyanide – named “prussic acid” after Prussian blue – as well as a drug to treat metal poisoning.

However, it wasn’t long before synthesizing ended up at the heart of a divisive issue among chemists and scientists in general.

In 1828, German chemist Friedrich Wohler successfully synthesized urea, a relatively simple biomolecule found in urine. What’s controversial about that? Well, Wohler made something that had previously only been made by living creatures, and he did it using entirely nonorganic materials like mercury cyanate.

This sparked a debate around the subject of vitalism, and it’s one that may never be fully put to rest. Those who embrace vitalism believe that there’s something unique and special to living things – an essence or spirit that non-living things must lack. But here was Wohler’s urea synthesis, challenging this very idea.

---

The twentieth century featured some disastrous chemical developments.

Once upon a time, owning a refrigerator was a dangerous proposition. In the 1920s, refrigerators worked by expanding and compressing gases. For some units, that gas was propane. For others, it was ammonia or sulfur dioxide. All of these gases involved some sort of risk, be they toxic to breathe or highly flammable. And since many of the gases were naturally corrosive, a leaking refrigerator was an all too common occurrence.

Freon, the trade name for dichlorodifluoromethane, was developed in 1930 to solve this problem. It was both non-flammable and non-corrosive. It was soon being used for a number of other products, like hair spray and asthma inhalers.

But over 40 years later, it was discovered that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) like Freon were increasing the levels of chlorine free radicals in the atmosphere. As it turns out, CFCs are also reactive to UV light – and this reaction leads to a harmful cycle.

UV light causes the CFCs to break down and release chlorine free radicals, which then causes ozone to break down, which, in turn, releases even more free radicals. Therefore, a small amount of CFCs leads to big problems. In fact, one chlorine radical can result in tens of thousands of destroyed ozone molecules.

This became apparent in 1974 when American chemist Frank Sherwood Rowland and Mexican chemist Mario Jose Molina released their study on CFCs and ozone. Sure enough, the layer of ozone protecting the planet was being seriously depleted, and laws were soon being passed to ban the use of CFCs like Freon.

By the late-1900s, it was becoming increasingly apparent that certain chemicals came with disastrous consequences if not handled with the utmost care. One incident in the 1980s made this painfully clear.

In 1984, the worst chemical disaster of its time took place in Bhopal, India. It happened at a Union Carbide plant that was manufacturing a compound used for pesticide, known as MIC, or methyl isocyanate. This chemical can cause eye irritation if just two parts per million are in the air. If that amount exceeds twenty parts per million, your lungs can be damaged.

On the night of December 2, 1984, thirty metric tons of MIC leaked from the plant and covered 25 square miles of the surrounding area. The cause of the leak is still a matter of debate, but many of Bhopal’s half million residents suffered long-term cases of eye and lung trauma.

In the final chapter, we’ll take a look at a couple of other developments on the horizon that could have game-changing consequences.

---

Future milestones may involve innovations to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

So what does the future of chemistry hold? What landmark events can we look forward to in the years to come?

Lots of interested parties are now pursuing a clean energy source. Many of our current fuels contribute to the greenhouse effect, a phenomenon first discovered in 1896 by Swedish chemist Svante August Arrhenius. Essentially, a buildup of carbon dioxide and water vapor in the atmosphere prevents heat from escaping and thereby wreaks havoc on our climate.

Enter hydrogen. While many of today’s convenient power sources create carbon dioxide emissions, burning hydrogen only releases water vapor, which makes it a desirable and renewable fuel. In fact, people have been looking to hydrogen as the fuel of the future since at least the 1970s. There are, however, a few complications.

So, hydrogen isn’t exactly an energy source. Electricity can be converted into hydrogen through a process involving water. But the real problem to overcome is storage. Hydrogen molecules are so small they can even absorb into metal structures, making it a difficult fuel to store. However, the author believes that this hurdle could be cleared by around 2025.

Along the same lines is the development of artificial photosynthesis, which could arrive in around 2030.

Critical information about photosynthesis was revealed in 1947 when biologist Samuel Goodnow Wildman discovered Rubisco. This plant enzyme later proved to be part of the Calvin cycle, which is a key part of the photosynthesis process that involves turning carbon dioxide into glucose.

It’s a drastic understatement to say that photosynthesis is extremely important. It produces the oxygen that keeps us alive and regulates carbon dioxide, thereby making earth inhabitable. And then there’s the fact that without plants, our food chain would completely fall apart.

But there’s one odd thing about the Rubisco enzyme: it’s really slow. It only goes through three molecular changes per second, and no one’s really sure why. So the question is, how can we improve the process? After all, the benefits could be world-saving, since a faster enzyme could capture and remove more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

There are other potential benefits to artificial photosynthesis, including the possibility of getting hydrogen out of water without using electricity. All of this could dramatically reduce one of the main causes of the growing climate crisis. Time will tell if today’s chemists will be able to improve upon nature to save the day.

---

The history of chemistry is full of fascinating stories and remarkable individuals who’ve brought us closer to understanding all the complex chemical reactions that are happening around us. Many of the discoveries are all the more amazing since they happened by accident. Other events have a tragic undercurrent since they’ve taught us the dangers of certain chemical substances. Many lives have been lost, but chemistry is also behind many of the life-saving and life-prolonging advancements that have been made over the years. Chemistry may still surprise us in the years to come if scientists can find a way to create clean fuels and remove harmful carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

full summary https://notes.io/qdDy6

[Ella · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very detailed and informative book on some of the greatest discoveries in chemistry - all accompanied with great quality images of course. I really did enjoy this book, but it's not the type of thing you can read in one sitting. It is very information dense and some of the concepts can be challenging to wrap your head around in one page if you're not already familiar with them. Certainly I could never hope to read more than a few pages at a time and actually hope to get something out of it. Sometimes the language and terminology used also meant some of the descriptions went over my head, but most of the time it was made pretty easy to understand. Because it was in chronological order it meant if you were unsure of a particular concept, in all likelihood it had been explained a few pages back if you felt like refreshing your memory.
All in all, a good book and introduction to some important concepts in chemistry.

[Vanessa Princessa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book thanks to Blinkist.

I loved this, because it only gets “Curiouser and Curiouser!”


The key message in these blinks:

The history of chemistry is full of fascinating stories and remarkable individuals who’ve brought us closer to understanding all the complex chemical reactions that are happening around us. Many of the discoveries are all the more amazing since they happened by accident. Other events have a tragic undercurrent since they’ve taught us the dangers of certain chemical substances. Many lives have been lost, but chemistry is also behind many of the life-saving and life-prolonging advancements that have been made over the years. Chemistry may still surprise us in the years to come if scientists can find a way to create clean fuels and remove harmful carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. 


• Human achievements in chemistry started in the Bronze Age. 
• Ancient chemists advanced purification and refinement techniques, often with hopes for gold and eternal life.
• Some ancient techniques took hundreds of years to understand, while others remain a mystery.
• Good and virtuous intentions can sometimes lead to unintended consequences. 
• In the seventeenth century, world-changing developments preceded a shift to hard science. 
• In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, chemical synthesis continued to advance. 
• In many cases, landmark events required multiple discoveries. 
• History is full of troublesome substances. 
• Some discoveries came at a heavy cost. 
• It took decades before the effects of leaded gasoline were revealed.
• The twentieth century featured some disastrous chemical developments.
• Modern research techniques have led to the development of life-saving drugs.
• Future milestones may involve innovations to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.


What to read next:

Happy Accidents, by Morton A. Meyers

As the history of gunpowder shows, sometimes the things people discover have nothing to do with what they set out to find. As it turns out, the history of medical milestones is filled with these kinds of unexpected discoveries, and this is precisely what author Morton A. Meyers covers in his 2007 book, Happy Accidents: Serendipity in Modern Medical Breakthroughs. 

Penicillin, Valium, and Viagra are just a few of the major medical discoveries that happened by pure accident. So if you like stories of kismet and unexpected twists and turns, we recommend heading over to our blinks to Happy Accidents.

[Akumar · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a history of Chemistry from ancient times to the present, in a capsule format, with each topic being discussed in one page with an accompanying photograph. It may sound like pedagogic, because it is one. Even then, it is far more interesting than the 'anhydrous' chemistry textbooks of our high school days. Several anecdotes 'fix' various principles of the subject in your head like no textbook can.

Royalty is associated with color blue, because prior to 1700s, this pigment was rare for oil paintings and came from lapis-lazuli sourced from present day Afghanistan. So this color was used only for the royalty and thus became associated with luxury. Morphine is named after Greek God of sleep and dreams, Morpheus. Ozone is named after Greek God of smell. Helium is named after Greek God of Sun. And so on.

The earlier chapters are easy to understand and fun. But as you progress into the book, especially into the second half of 20th century, the associated science becomes progressively harder to follow, if you are not a Chemistry major. But there are many chapters, like on graphene, carbon nanotubes, buckminsterfullerenes etc. The book ends with a peek into the current focus of the subject; into hydrogen storage and synthetic photosynthesis. The former is touted as an energy revolution and the latter as ultimate prize which could provide instant food source. The author puts 5-10 years time horizon for breaking forth in the two efforts.

Overall, the book is moderately interesting in the first half and hopeful in the end.

[Anup Sinha · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is clearly a book for science junkies and particularly those with a fondness for chemistry. It sums up what is, in Derek B. Lowe’s assessment, the 250 greatest milestones in the history of chemistry. As a chemistry teacher myself, I very much enjoyed the history lesson and learning a lot of the names behind the concepts I teach every year. I also learned a whole lot more new stuff, above and beyond.

Some of the chapters (actually just one-page stories of each of the milestones) were better explanatory than others. There were some I didn’t get much from other than what the milestone was.

This is definitely a slow read, at least for me. It’s difficult to binge read, it was more conducive for periodic sit downs while having other books to read on the side over the course of a month.

Strongly recommended for like-interested readers.

[Maxine Blackwood · Rating 5 out of 5]

The history of chemistry is full of fascinating stories and remarkable individuals who’ve brought us closer to understanding all the complex chemical reactions that are happening around us. Many of the discoveries are all the more amazing since they happened by accident. Other events have a tragic undercurrent since they’ve taught us the dangers of certain chemical substances. Many lives have been lost, but chemistry is also behind many of the life-saving and life-prolonging advancements that have been made over the years. Chemistry may still surprise us in the years to come if scientists can find a way to create clean fuels and remove harmful carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. 

[Salsabeel Al-Zamly]

The history of chemistry is full of fascinating stories and remarkable individuals who’ve brought us closer to understanding all the complex chemical reactions that are happening around us. Many of the discoveries are all the more amazing since they happened by accident. Other events have a tragic undercurrent since they’ve taught us the dangers of certain chemical substances. Many lives have been lost, but chemistry is also behind many of the life-saving and life-prolonging advancements that have been made over the years. Chemistry may still surprise us in the years to come if scientists can find a way to create clean fuels and remove harmful carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. 

[Quinns Pheh · Rating 4 out of 5]

The history of chemistry is full of captivating stories and noteworthy individuals who have discovered and unveiled the complex chemical reactions that are happening around us. Some amazing discoveries had happened by accident while some have a tragic undercurrent which therefore taught us the dangers of certain chemical substances. Although lives have been lost, these very scientific breakthroughs have made life-saving and life-prolonging advancements throughout the years.

[Bill White · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really enjoying the _____ Book series of books. The Chemistry Book illuminated many ideas that I only had a vague notion of from a scientific background. Each "chapter" is only few paragraphs/pages and makes for easy reading in short time. The author is well versed in the subject and provides many sources of background information that can be used to follow up and gather more information are at the end of each chapter and in the appendices. Recommended!

[chrstphre campbell · Rating 1 out of 5]

Lushly Illustrated… ( ! ) ?

Describing this book as lushly illustrated is wildly disingenuous !
Each chapter is accompanied by 1 off The shelf unrelated photograph & Zero graphical depictions of any chemical structures or any references to any actual chemistry.
Very disappointing, & because The book is so large, this disappointment is only compounded by ( ! )

[Joe Q. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A nice trip through the history of chemistry from the author of the long-running "In The Pipeline" blog. Written in an entertaining, breezy style. There's lots to like here even for experienced chemists.

[Felipe CZ · Rating 3 out of 5]

History of chemistry from Bronze Age, around 2000 BCE, to modern times. Ancient chemists advanced refinement techniques for gold and "eternal life". Some discoveries were made by accident, but the learning leads the way to helpful advancements.

[Victor · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got this book because I enjoy reading the author's blog (In the Pipeline), but am fairly disappointed. It's basically a collection of random chemistry facts in chronological order. I feel like the blog is more detailed than the book!

[The 99th Edition · Rating 5 out of 5]

Blinkist
لطالما وجدت الكيمياء و خصوصا فرع العضوية مادة شائقة و ماتعة للدراسة و هذا الكتاب سرد مبسط لرحلة الانسان و الكيمياء

[Sandhya Varadharajan · Rating 5 out of 5]

http://sandhya.varadh.com/2020/08/the...

[Endi Tafani · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the best present I have received (my dog aside) , it’s perfect for a chemistry student I can confirm.

[Tinwerume · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's okay. Ignore everything that looks like an opinion, and distrust all the anecdotes. But in terms of providing a simple overview of the history of chemistry it's fine.

Update 10/07/2020: I'm coming around on this book. It's *not* a serious history of chemistry, and you won't get an understanding of the actual process of experiment and debate that led up to major discoveries, but it's also not trying to be that. But if you read it not as a history of chemistry but as an *overview* of chemistry in chronological order, it's actually quite good. And the author is an actual chemist, so you can be confident it's pretty accurate. I'd definitely choose this over the standard popsci "900 pages of fluff and 50 pages of actual science" formula.

[Synthia Salomon · Rating 2 out of 5]

I took a tour through some of chemistry’s most important milestones. It took me over 2 years…

Key points:

Human achievements in chemistry started in the Bronze Age. 

Some ancient techniques took hundreds of years to understand, while others remain a mystery.

Good and virtuous intentions can sometimes lead to unintended consequences.

In many cases, landmark events required multiple discoveries.

Some discoveries came at a heavy cost.

It took decades before the effects of leaded gasoline were revealed.

Future milestones may involve innovations to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

[Daria Rotko · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve been looking forward to reading a book by Derek Lowe since stumbling upon his blog on the drug development, and it did not disappoint. There is his impeccable writing style combined with the well-structured narrative flow. As expected, the information is reliable yet without drying into the plain statement of facts. Few pop-science books manage to be multilayered enough to capture interest of both general audience and readers with some subject background. We need more of them.

[Nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

For a coffee table book about chemistry, this is very good indeed.

[Mills College Library]

540.9 L9133 2016

[Leandro Valdes · Rating 5 out of 5]

A page a day keeps Lavoisier aways.