AS AN earnest and respectable science is often said to date from 1661,  o distinguis it en erratic transition. Into teentury scable in botionable  , given t materials, he could make himselfinvisible.

    Perter typifies trange and often accidental nature of cs early days t gold could someilled from y ofcolor seems to or in y buckets of  for monte processes, ed t into a noxious paste and to a translucent ance. None of it yieldedgold, of course, but a strange and interesting ter a time, tancebegan to glo often spontaneously burst into flame.

    tential for tuff—s meaning “lig lost on eager businesspeople, but ties of manufacture made it too costly to exploit. An ounce of pailed forsix guineas—peroday’s money—or more than gold.

    At first, soldiers o provide terial, but suc rial-scale production. In t named Karl(or Carl) Sco manufacture p t ery of p Sches.

    Scraordinary and extraordinarily luckless fellotle in tus,  elements—cungsten, nitrogen, and oxygen—and got credit for none oft into publication aftersomeone else ly. annic acid, and  to see tential of c made otremely hy.

    Scable scoming ence on tasting a little of everytoriously disagreeable substances as mercury, prussic acid(anot150 years later Er (see page 146). Scually caug forty-t oxicced for tunned and terminal look on hisface.

    ere t and Swedish-speaking, Scheele would have enjoyed universal acclaim.

    Instead credit ended to lodge ed cs, mostly from t for various breakinglycomplicated reasons could not get imely manner. Instead credit to Josepley, ly, but latterly, in to receive credit for textbooks still attribute co , but ty-six years after Scheele had.

    Altry ury t separated Neill o go. Rigo teentury (and in Priestley’s case a little beyond) scientistseveryually found, t just tiated airs, depicated marine acids, perraqueousexions, and, above all, pon, tance t  to be tive agentin combustion. Some, terious élanvital, t brouge objects to life. No one kne you could enliven it  of electricity (anotion Mary Sed to full effect in ein ) and t it existed insome substances but not otwo brancry:

    organic (for tances t  to ) and inorganic (for t didnot).

    Someone of insigo t cry into t oine-Laurent Lavoisier. Born in 1743, Lavoisiery (itle for t a practicing sitution called ted taxes and fees on be. Alts mild and fair-minded, t did not tax t only ten arbitrarily. ForLavoisier, titution  it provided o follo oday’s money.

    ter embarking on tive career pateen-year-olddauging of s and minds botellect and soon ively alongside her husband.

    Despite to put in five  days—time to be commissioner of gunpoo deter smugglers, ric system, and coauture Cs.

    As a leading member of to take aninformed and active interest in opical—ism, prison reform, tion of insects, ter supply of Paris. It Lavoisier made some dismissive remarks about a neion t ted to tist. t tist never forgave .

    t. At a time  anybody eresting po incidentally, some ts  to befound—Lavoisier failed to uncover a single one. It certainly  for  of beakers.

    Lavoisier een t o an almost preposterous degree, t private laboratory in existence.

    Instead ook t ponand mepic airs. ified oxygen and  t, o bring rigor, clarity, and meto cry.

    And  did in fact come in very remely exacting studies requiring tmeasurements. termined, for instance, t a rusting object doesn’t lose ed t tracting elemental particles from t  realization tmatter can be transformed but not eliminated. If you burned ts matter  amount of stuff in the same.

    tion of mass, and it ionary concept.

    Unfortunately, it coincided ype of revolution—tirely on the wrong side.

    Not only  ically builtt enclosed Paris—an edifice so loat it  ttacked by tizens. Capitalizing on t, noionalAssembly, denounced Lavoisier and suggested t it  time for his hanging.

    Soon after do long after t e Corday, but by time it oolate for Lavoisier.

    In 1793, terror, already intense, ratced up to a oberMarie Antoinette  to tine. tardy plans to slip ao Scotland, Lavoisier ed. In May y-one felloribunal (in acourtroom presided over by a bust of Marat). Eiged acquittals, but Lavoisier andtaken directly to tion (noe of t of Frencines. Lavoisier cepped up and accepted e. Less ter, on July 27, Robespierrecerrorsly ended.

    A er atue of Lavoisier ed in Paris and mucil someone pointed out t it looked notioning tor admitted t ician and p—apparently  no one ice or, iced, . tatue of Lavoisier-cum-Condorcet o remain in place for anotury until t aken aed down for scrap.

    In trous oxide, or lauger it  its use “tended by a  ury it y, ime devoted to little else. ters put on “laugeers could refres inion and tertain taggerings.

    It  until 1846 t anyone got around to finding a practical use for nitrous oxide, asan anestic. Goodness kno of t obvious practicalapplication.

    I mention to make t t cry, eentury, rat its bearings in t decades of teentgeology ietly it o do ations ofequipment—tance, no centrifuges until tury,severely restricting many kinds of experiments—and partly it as gentlemen, o be drao geology, natural ory, and physics.

    (tly less true in continental Europe tain, but only slig isperelling t one of t important observations of tury, Broion,ure of molecules,  by a c but by a Scottisanist, Robert Broiced, in 1827,  tiny grains of pollensuspended in er remained indefinitely in motion no matter osettle. tual motion—namely tions of invisible molecules—ery.)t  not been for a splendidly improbable cer namedCount von Rumford, itle, began life in oburn,Massacts, in 1753 as plain Benjamin tious,“ure and figure,” occasionally courageous and exceedingly briguntroubled by anyt nineteen een years  at tbreak of revolution in ts, for a time spying on teful year of 1776, facing arrest“for lukey,” ai-Royalists armed s of  tar, bags of feat desire to adorn h.

    to England and to Germany, o t of Bavaria, so impressing ties t in 1791 von Rumford of t the English Garden.

    In betakings, ime to conduct a good deal of solidscience.  auty on t toelucidate tion of fluids and tion of ocean currents. ed several useful objects, including a drip coffeemaker, type of range still knooine-Laurent. t asuccess and ted. Rumford stayed on in France,  his former wives, in 1814.

    But our purpose in mentioning  in 1799, during a comparatively briefinterlude in London, itution, yet anoties t popped into being all over Britain in te eigeenturies. For a time it  titution of standing to actively promote try, and t  entirely to a brilliant young mannamed ed titution’s professor of cry slyafter its inception and rapidly gained fame as an outstanding lecturer and productiveexperimentalist.

    Soon after taking up ion, Davy began to bang out nes one afteranotassium, sodium, magnesium, calcium, strontium, and aluminum or aluminium,depending on which branch of English you favor.

    1s not somucute as because ecricity to a molten substance—electrolysis, as it is knoogets, a fiftotal of   unfortunately as a young man tac to tpleasures of nitrous oxide. taco t  (literally) times a day. Eventually, in 1829, it is t to have killed him.

    Fortunately more sober types   person to intimate ture of an atom (progress t ely a little furtalian ic name of Lorenzo Romano Amadeo Carlo Avogadro, Count of Quarequa and Cerreto,made a discovery t erm—namely, t type, if kept at temperature, ainidentical numbers of molecules.

    table about Avogadro’s Principle, as it became kno, itprovided a basis for more accurately measuring t of atoms. UsingAvogadro’s matics, cs ually able to , for instance, t atypical atom er of 0.00000008 centimeters,  no one kne Avogadro’s appealingly simple principle for almost fiftyyears.

    2Partly tiring fellole ists, publistended nomeetings—but also it ings to attend and fe. trial Revolution eristic indecisiveness onDavys part.  isolated t in 1808,  alumium. For son reason  better oft and c to aluminum four years later. Americans dutifully adopted term, but mai Britising out t it disrupted ttern establisrontium, so they added a vowel and syllable.

    2to ter adoption of Avogadros number, a basic unit of measure in cry, s value is placed at 6.0221367 x 1023, udents ing just  is, so I canreport t it is equivalent to to cover ted States to a depter in t drink cans t acked, cover to adept number of American pennies rillionaire. It is a big number.

    driven in large part by developments in cry, and yet as an organized science crybarely existed for decades.

    ty of London  founded until 1841 and didn’t begin to produce aregular journal until 1848, by  learned societies in Britain—Geological,Geograpicultural, and Linnaean (for naturalists and botanists)—least ty years old and often mucitute of Cry didn’t come intobeing until 1877, a year after ty. Becausecry o get organized, neant breakt begin to become general until t international cry congress, in Karlsruhe,in 1860.

    Because cs for so long ion, conventions o emerge. Untilo tury, t mean er to one cbut o anot ed everywhere.

    Cs also used a bey of symbols and abbreviations, often self-invented.

    Sters by decreeing tts be abbreviated on tin names, in ferrum ) and t for silver is Ag (from tinargentum ). t so many of tions accord rogen, O for Oxygen, s Englisinate nature, not itsexalted status. to indicate toms in a molecule, Berzelius employed asuperscript notation, as in er, for no special reason, to render t: h2O.

    Despite tidyings-up, cry by teenturyoprominence in 1869 of an odd and crazed-looking professor at ty of St. Petersburgnamed Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleyev.

    Mendeleyev (also sometimes spelled Mendeleev or Mendeléef) tobolsk, in t of Siberia, into a ed, reasonably prosperous, and verylarge family—so large, in fact, t ory  track of exactly een ceen. All agree, atany rate, t Dmitri . Luck  alri  to raordinary ory. All  il 1848, o penury. Determined to get  cion, table Mrs. Mendeleyev cri four to St.

    Petersburg—t’s equivalent to traveling from London to Equatorial Guinea—and deposited titute of Pedagogy. orn out by s, ser.

    Mendeleyev dutifully completed udies and eventually landed a position at ty. tent but not terribly outstanding c, kno once a year, ts in tory.

    ty-five, o toy o arrange ts. At time, elements omic ance). Mendeleyev’s breakto see t table.

    As is often tually been anticipated teur c in England named Joed t  certain properties—in a sense to every eigly unime  quite yet come, Ne taves and likened t to taves on a piano keyboard. Peration, but tally preposterous and  gatimes ask  s to play ttle tune. Discouraged, Neher.

    Mendeleyev used a slig approacs into groups of seven,but employed fundamentally t andive. Because ties repeated tionbecame knoable.

    Mendeleyev o aire in Nortience elseically. Using a broadly similar concept, s in alroical columns called groups. tantly s ofrelationso side. Specifically,tical columns put toget ies. ts ontop of silver and silver sits on top of gold because of ties as metals, erminant intron valences, for al ro is knoomic number.

    tructure of atoms and tons  all t is necessary is to appreciate t one proton, and so it omic number of one and comes first on t; uraniumy-tons, and so it comes near tomic number of ninety-two.

    In ted out, cry really is just a matter of counting.

    (Atomic number, incidentally, is not to be confused omic rons in a given element.) till a great deal t knoood.  common element in tno one element, s existence  even been suspectedbefore t—and t on Eart in t roscopeduring a solar eclipse,  beisolated until 1895. Even so, to Mendeleyev’s invention, cry ing.

    For most of us, table is a ty in tract, but for cs itestablise orderliness and clarity t can ated. “it adoubt, table of ts is t elegant organizational cever devised,” e Robert E. Krebs in tory and Use of Our Earts, and you can find similar sentiments in virtually every ory of cry in print.

    today y-turally occurring ones plus acouple of dozen t ed in labs. tual number is sligentiousbecause ts exist for only milliontssometimes argue over ed or not. In Mendeleyev’s dayjust sixty-ts  part of o realize t ts as t make a complete picture, t many pieces ed, s  in whey werefound.

    No one knoally, s migomic  ain is tanyt is found  neatly into Mendeleyev’s great scheme.

    teentury  great surprise for cs. It began in 1896  of uranium salts on a e out some time later, o discovert ts , just as if te o ligs ting rays of some sort.

    Considering tance of urned tter over to a graduate student for investigation. Fortunately tudent  émigré from Poland named Marie Curie. orking  certain kinds of rocks poured out constant and extraordinary amounts of energy,yet  diminisectable il Einstein explained t ting mass into energy in an exceedingly efficient way.

    Marie Curie dubbed t “radioactivity.” In ts—polonium, ry, and radium.

    In 1903 tly ary, in 1911, to ry and p McGill University in Montreal t Ruterested in tive materials. it immense reserves of energy s of matter,and t tive decay of t for most of th.

    t radioactive elements decayed into ots—t one dayyou om of uranium, say, and t you om of lead. trulyextraordinary. It aneously.

    Ever tist, Rut to see t ticalapplication in ticed t in any sample of radioactive material, it alook t of time for o decay—ted  teady, reliable rate of decay could be used as a kind of clock. By calculating backerial ly it its age. ested a piece of pitc to be 700million years old—very muc people o grant th.

    In traveled to London to give a lecture at titution—t organization founded by Count von Rumford only 105 years before,t poant eon compared ness of te Victorians. Ruto talk about egration tivity, as part of  chblende.

    tactfully—for t, if not aledt Kelvin ed t t ions out. Rut oto radioactivity tly y-four million yearsKelvin’s calculations allowed.

    Kelvin beamed at Rutful presentation, but  unmoved. ed to  astute and important contribution to science—far greater thermodynamics.

    As

    scientific  revolutions,  Rut universallyaccepted. Jorenuously insisted o t ty-nine million years old, and opped only to  Rutoo mucime. But even ric dating, as decay measurements became kno ual age. Science  track, but still .

    Kelvin died in 1907. t year also sari Mendeleyev. Like Kelvin, ive enceof radiation or tron or anyt .  mostly storming out of labs and lecture  101 es Paul Stratis an unstable element.”

    Radiation, of course,  on and on, literally and in ed. In to experience clear signs of radiation sickness—notably dull acless .

    Marie Curie spent t of inction in to foundted Radium Institute of ty of Paris in 1914. Despite o t because after ted an affair  t ly indiscreet toscandalize even t least tter.

    For a long time it  anytic as radioactivitymust be beneficial. For years, manufacturers of toote and laxatives put radioactivets, and at least until te 1920s tel in tless otured iceffects of its “Radioactive mineral springs.” Radioactivity  banned in consumerproducts until 1938. By time it e for Madame Curie, , is so pernicious and long lasting t even noo  in lead-lined boxes, and to see t don protective clothing.

    to ted and untingly  atomic scientists, by tietury it  Eartionablyvenerable, tury of science ly say quite  to get a nesoomic one.

    PARt  III   A NE AGE DANSA P is toms’  atoms.

    -Anonymous