快猫短视频

Oxygen by Carl Djerassi and Roald Hoffmann, Wiley-VCH,
$14.95/拢9.99, ISBN 3527304134

PLAYS about scientists seem to be in fashion, and Oxygen is about
three of them鈥攁ll candidates vying for recognition as the discoverer of
oxygen. We usually attribute the discovery to Antoine Lavoisier, who was later
caught up in the maelstrom of French revolutionary terror and guillotined.
Joseph Priestley and Carl Wilhelm Scheele also have claims to the title, though
both clung to the idea of phlogiston as the 鈥渧ital air鈥� that made combustion
possible.

When the Nobel Committee proposes to award a 鈥渞etro-prize鈥� to the true
discoverer, the inevitable result is conflict鈥攖he lifeblood of drama.
Djerassi and Hoffmann鈥檚 play alternates between the manoeuvrings of the three
candidates and their wives in Stockholm in 1777, and the tortuous deliberations
of the present-day committee.

There is also a play within a play: Lavoisier and his wife don masks and she
sticks a pin into a balloon representing phlogiston鈥攑roviding almost the
only relief from the dialogue. The play raises questions about ambition,
originality, fame and the purity of human motives in scientific achievement.

A pre-publication extract appeared in 快猫短视频
(16 October1999, p 34).
But plays are meant to be staged, and following Oxygen鈥檚
world premiere last month at the American Chemical Society meeting in San Diego,
a London production is scheduled for later this year.