Mendeleyev's Dream: The Quest For the Elements

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Mendeleyev's Dream: The Quest For the Elements

Mendeleyev's Dream: The Quest For the Elements

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I'm reading this book to learn about science: I didn't want to know about the sex lives of famous scientists. Strathern is an entertaining guide, capable of marshaling a colorful cast of thinkers and experimentalists.

In this elegant and entertaining book, the award-winning novelist and expositor of difficult ideas, Paul Strathern unravels the history of chemistry through the dramatic quest for the elements. 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. Chemistry has been a neglected area of science writing, and Mendeleyev, the king of chemistry, is a largely forgotten genius. Indian mathematical genius and dreamer Srinivasa Ramanujan often dreamt of a Hindu goddess, named Namakkal, who would appear and present mathematical formulae which he would verify after waking. Misguided from the start and frequently bizarre, alchemy did manage to work out a good many compounds, chemical processes and even some practical applications.This was a very readable history of chemistry, focusing on the people who made the greatest advances, including philosophers and experimentalists.

The discovery of the periodic table lays out the basic material composition of the universe and this has done a tremendous impact to the development of modern science. Among his negative opinions, he often puts down their religion as "ignorance", which gives the author himself an unlikable air of pomposity and judgmentalism. Finding the truth is never easy, and finding even the smallest part of it is always something to celebrate. It focuses 100 percent on the deficits of pre-modern scholars, just as doctors used to focus on the deficits of disabled people.This, however, does not detract from the amazing story behind the distillation of modern chemistry out of the quagmire of beliefs and false starts - era after era - finally culminating in Mendeleyev's periodic table of the elements and the birth of modern chemistry. The French chemists Lavoisier was the only one that Strathern portrayed as normal but he makes much of the fact that that did not spare Lavoisier from the guillotine. But if you have to put in the modern judgement (which may possibly be a service to modern readers), do it ONCE and do it AT THE END. On a wintry February day in 1869 the great Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleyev fell asleep at his desk after a marathon game of patience. After a while I started feeling like I should mark down the major figures he is covering in the book.

Even though Strathern prose is pleasant and the content interesting, I prefer the former more direct approach. 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. While the book was quite lengthy, I couldn’t help but feel that the part about Mendeleyev’s story was rather concise.

Seller has stated it will dispatch the item within 1 working day upon receipt of cleared payment - opens in a new window or tab . Framing this history is the life story of the nineteenth-century Russian scientist Dmitri Mendeleyev, who fell asleep at his desk and awoke after conceiving the periodic table in a dream-the template upon which modern chemistry is founded and the formulation of which marked chemistry's coming of age as a science. The first two chapter on the Greeks (the four elements, beginnings of atomic theory) and the Egyptians (beginnings of alchemy) are an OK start, but the book then takes a serious wrong turn, into meanderings on the historical development of the philosophical underpinnings of the scientific method. Most of our PDFs are also available to download and we're working on making the final remaining ones downloadable now.



  • Fruugo ID: 258392218-563234582
  • EAN: 764486781913
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