"Strathern is an entertaining guide, capable of marshaling a colorful cast of thinkers and experimentalists. It’s a pleasure to find a popular book about chemistry."
"Strathern does an excellent job revitalizing the drama of chemistry’s volatile mix of ideas and substances. His readable romp through the annals of chemistry conveys a remarkable amount of information about science in general."
"Chemistry has been a neglected area of science writing, and Mendeleyev, the king of chemistry, is a largely forgotten genius. Strathern’s history goes a long way toward correcting that injustice."
"Taking a traditional view of intellectual history, Strathern considers the 17th century as the era when the ‘new science’ of chemistry could at last ‘shed its oriental esoteric past.’"
"Strathern is an entertaining guide, capable of marshaling a colorful cast of thinkers and experimentalists. It’s a pleasure to find a popular book about chemistry."
"Taking a traditional view of intellectual history, Strathern considers the 17th century as the era when the ‘new science’ of chemistry could at last ‘shed its oriental esoteric past.’"
Breakthroughs in science, like other creative endeavors, often come in a flash of intuition. In the 19th century, Dmitri Mendeleyev conceived the periodic table in a dream. This lively history of chemistry by novelist and science writer Paul Strathern traces the development of this field from its beginnings in alchemy to the splitting of the atom.
Mr. Strathern's books are well-written, clear and informed; they have a breezy wit about them.
Alas, chemistry has lost much of that excitement, but Strathern does an excellent job revitalizing the drama of its volatile mix of ideas and substances. His readable romp through the annals of chemistry conveys a remarkable amount of information about science in general.
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. (Apr.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
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 Cahners Business Information.
Mendeleyev's Dream tells the history of chemistry and those who fostered its growth and discoveries, from the early Greek philosophers to modern scientists, focussing on the particular contributions of 19th century Russian scientist Mendeleyev, who dreamed the Periodic Table of Elements. A fascinating set of insights into how the science of chemistry evolved.
"Strathern does an excellent job revitalizing the drama of chemistry's volatile mix of ideas and substances. His readable romp through the annals of chemistry conveys a remarkable amount of information about science in general." —Sunday Times
"Chemistry has been a neglected area of science writing, and Mendeleyev, the king of chemistry, is a largely forgotten genius. Strathern's history goes a long way toward correcting that injustice." —Simon Singh, Sunday Telegraph, author of The Code Book and Fermat's Last Theorem
"In its pages there are more asides, anecdotes, ammunition for pub quizzes, personal information about alchemists, scientists, chemists, and charlatans, and touches of humor than the reader has a right to expect." —The Scotsman
"Strathern is an entertaining guide, too, capably marshaling a colorful cast of thinkers and experimentalists...Beguiling." —New Scientist
"[A] wonderful historical romp through mankind's attempts to understand the constituents of matter...a witty, complexity-free confection that makes nonsense of the idea-we need to make our science books more demanding and headache-inducing." —The Observer
"An earthly, rambunctious romp through the history of chemistry." —The Independent
