Transmutations of Chymistry - Wilhelm Homberg and the Academie Royale Des Sciences

"This book resurrects science history between Robert Boyle and Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier by telling the story of a remarkable genius who devised an innovative, comprehensive, and experimentally based theory of alchemy/chemistry (called chymistry) that was widely celebrated and adopted both in his own time and after. Wilhelm Homberg (1653-1715) is a bridge between traditions: he held an expansive vision for chymistry as a natural philosophical discipline while at the same time continued to pursue metallic transmutation, only lightly veiled in his official publications. In Lawrence M. Principe's hands, Holmberg's life and work, particularly at the Acadâemie Royale, provide new insights on several of the significant changes that chymistry underwent during and immediately after his lifetime. This new biography radically revises what was previously known about the contours of chymistry and scientific institutions in the early eighteenth century"--

About the author

Lawrence M. Principe is the Drew Professor of the Humanities at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of many books, most recently The Secrets of Alchemy, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

Product details

• Authors: Lawrence M Principe, Lawrence M Principe, Lawrence M. Principe
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 30.06.2020
• EAN: 9780226700786
• ISBN: 978-0-226-70078-6
• No. of pages: 504
• Series: Synthesis
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature > Letters, diaries; Humanities, art, music > History > Modern era up to 1918; Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > Natural sciences (general); Non-fiction book > Nature, technology > Biographies, autobiographies; European History, SCIENCE / History, SCIENCE / Chemistry / General, chemistry, History of Science, Biography: science, technology & medicine, Biography: science, technology and medicine, HISTORY / Europe / Renaissance