Friday, January 12, 2007

Top 5 (al)chemist biographies




Top 5 (al)chemist biographies

1)Isaac Newton: The Last Sorcerer & Newton's tyranny
A shared first place about the man who filled his days with alchemical experiments and found time to discover laws of mechanics and gravitation and develop the calculus and a lot more. These books tell the story of a weird and unpleasant scientist.

2) Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA
The story of photo 51 and of the woman who might have been awarded the nobel prize together with Wilkins, Watson and Crick.

3) Mauve: How One Man Invented a Color That Changed the World
About the bearded chemist who became rich with the failed synthesis of quinine.

4) The Nobleman and His Housedog
A well written story about of the astronomers (and alchemists) Tycho Brahe and Johannes Keppler and how the sun ended up as the centre of our solar system.

5) Marie Curie: A Life
I like this biography more than this famous one.

4 comments:

Russ said...

Hello,
I have over the past few months discovered the world of chemistry (especially organic) blogs, and become somewhat of a fan of many of them. I just wanted to tell you that I discovered yours about a week ago, and tonight I went back through your archives all the way to the beginning, and you may indeed have one of the coolest chemistry blogs around. I hope that it will gain the popularity it deserves, and that you will keep up the entertaining, informative work.

Cheers,
Russ

synthetic environment said...

Thanks for the kind words, Russ. This is quite a little blog (not doing enough self-promotion), it is growing slowly but steadily. I will try to maintain this standard (as journals would say).

Hmmm.. going to do a top 5 list of things this blog is lacking, perhaps.

Cheers

Excimer said...

I loved Uncle Tungsten by Oliver Sachs. Much more recent, but still very entertaining.

synthetic environment said...

I loved Uncle Tungsten as well. It is something like an autobiography, but Sachs is not a chemist, but he might be performing alchemical experiments in is basement that I am not aware of :-)