快猫短视频

DID Michael Faraday really rinse out Sir Humphry Davy鈥檚 socks? And, compared with Faraday鈥檚 later discoveries does it matter anyway?

Faraday鈥檚 early duties as Davy鈥檚 temporary valet-cum-assistant could safely be omitted from a bald account of their scientific endeavours. But to discover how and why such figures emerged as great chemists we need to know something more than end results. It is, after all, not so trivial to find out that Dorothy Hodgkin鈥檚 botanist mother gave her a copy of Bragg鈥檚 Concerning the Nature of Things when she was 15; or to be reminded just how antisocial, anti-establishment and downright cantankerous was Joseph Priestley; or how the rise of the professional chemist in the 19th century took place under the dual influences of the Industrial Revolution and Romanticism.

Creations of Fire does not contain any startling new insights. But it should win over anyone who switches off at the sight of a list of worthy achievements. Here they are interspersed with a generous sprinkling of human failures and foibles. Cathy Cobb and Harold Goldwhite succeed in sketching 鈥渁 humanised history of chemistry鈥�; an overview of the science from prehistoric metallurgy to superheayy elements that also highlights the personalities involved and throws in potted history for wider context. Their account is generally extremely readable.

The book is badly let down by its presentation, however. There are few illustrations. Worse, instead of stressing the links between people and events, the book divides these elements with subheadings of excruciating dullness. All this is rather a pity. It leaves the overall impression of an unreacted mixture of interesting ingredients, rather than the elegant synthesis great chemists so often sought.