Author Description

The Art of chemistry employs 187 figures to illuminate 72 essays on the mythical origins, experiments, and adventurous explorers in the annals of chemistry. Each of the eight sections tracks chemistry's incremental progress from myth to modern science, featuring the figures and diagrams that early chemists used to explain their craft. Readers will meet the deadly basilisk and the fabulous phoenix that populated the lore of pre-modern chemistry, learn the contributions to chemistry of Benjamin Franklin, and encounter Antoine Lavoisier, the father of modern chemistry. Greenberg also examines our fundamental connections with science through two personal essays, one on an adolescent friend who became a world-renowned entomology professor and the other on his quest to discover his own chemical heritage.