Wothers, P.: Antimony, Gold and Jupiter's Wolf, Oxford University Press, 273 pp., ISBN 9780199652723, GBP 20.00, 2019.
Dr. Peter Wothers MBE is a teaching fellow in the Department of Chemistry,
University of Cambridge and a well-known chemistry educator. He is the
author of a number of books including the textbook Organic Chemistry (Clayden et al.,
2001) and the popular science books Chemical Structure and Reactivity (Keeler and Wothers, 2008)
and Why Chemical Reactions Happen (Keeler and Wothers, 2003). All his books, like the present one, are
published by Oxford University Press (OUP). He completed his PhD in chemistry at
St Catherine's in 1996 having joined the college as an undergraduate in
1988. He is Keeper of College Silver and has amassed a collection of early
works on the history of chemistry. He has used these together with the
remarkable collection at the University of Cambridge to illustrate and enliven the
present text.
The interface with mineralogists naturally occurs because the elements were
originally mainly obtained from minerals. The early chemists could not order
elements off the internet but had to make them themselves. And indeed, right
up to Curie's discoveries, the elements were mainly found by investigations
of the composition of minerals. This is a necessary weakness of the book.
Wothers is a chemist and, as remarked by Berzelius (1815), “It thereby follows that one can surmise that the chemist's and the mineralogist's views of the same object not only CAN but MUST be different.”
“Härifrån härleder det sig, att man kan föreställa sig, att kemistens och den egenliga mineralogens åsikter av samma föremål ej endast KUNNA utan MÅSTE vara olika.”
I do not know who dreamed up the title of the book. It appears to have
developed from the OUP public relations department since it refers to just
antimony and gold – which I suppose may be catchy for the general public –
and “Jupiter's Wolf” which was a poetic term for wolfram briefly used by
Henckel in 1747. In other words the title has little to do with the book
contents and indeed, may do it a disservice, since the whole point of the
work is to describe where the names of the elements come from (Preface p.
vii). But then again, the OUP publicists are experts at their job and I know
little about book selling.
The book consists of 273 pages divided into nine chapters. It is splendidly
produced by OUP in trade Octavo and printed on uncoated paper by Clays of St
Ives, now owned by the Italian firm Elcograf. The 48 illustrations are
mainly line drawings and halftones and the general presentation is at the
high standard expected from OUP and Clays. The hardcover volume is priced at
GBP 20 and USD 25.95. Amazon is selling it already at GBP 10.63, with a
Kindle edition at GBP 11.98 even though the publication date is 29 November 2019.
The book is not primarily concerned with the etymology of the element names
and, indeed, etymological discussions are patchy. So, when Wothers
states that his purpose is to describe where the names of the elements come
from, he refers specifically to how they were discovered. In fact, the
reader interested in where the names of the elements come from is best
served by Peter van der Krogt's remarkable website Elementymology & Elements Multidict
(https://elements.vanderkrogt.net/index.php, last access: 14 January 2020), which covers far more ground
internationally and linguistically than Wothers' book – which is
essentially focused on west-European chemistry. Likewise the account of the
discovery of the elements does not surpass Mary Elvira Weeks' classical
account, which is now freely available at
https://archive.org/stream/discoveryoftheel002045mbp/discoveryoftheel002045mbp_djvu.txt (last access: 14 January 2020).
Chapter 1 “Heavenly Bodies” (31 pp.) examines the original seven metallic elements and
discusses their astronomical relationships. Wothers states (p. 1)
We can't properly understand why some of the more recent elements were named as they were without first understanding these earlier historical connections.
Some
etymology might have been useful here. For example, gold comes from the
proto-Indo-European ghel- meaning yellow-bright, like the Sun. Alchemists indeed
used a circle (p. 7) as a symbol for gold – but Wothers misses the central
dot and its meaning. Iron comes from Anglo-Saxon isern (Proto-Germanic isarnan) meaning
strong metal. Some reference to the effect of the introduction of iron
weapons might help explain why iron was associated with Mars, the god of
war. Chapter 2 “Goblins and Demons” (27 pp.) considers the next swathe of metallic and
submetallic elements to be discovered, including Sb, As, Bi, Co, and Ni. In
this and the following chapters, the etymology is more detailed. Chapter 3
“Fire and Brimstone” (23 pp.) discusses sulfur and phosphorus. Chapter 4 “H Two O to O Two H” (41 pp.) is an
exhaustive account of the discovery of the gases in air and the composition
of water. It covers the discovery of hydrogen and oxygen and includes a
sympathetic account of the phlogiston and caloric theories. The esoteric title of the chapter reflects Lavoisier's fundamental mistake in naming
hydrogen and oxygen: Wothers points out that, in reality, they have exactly
the opposite attributes to those which the etymology of their appellations
suggests. Chapter 5 “Of Ashes and Alkalis” (31 pp.) discusses the discoveries of the alkali metals
and, in passing, the development of the modern chemical symbols. Again the
chapter is very Eurocentric and, although alkali itself is a direct Arabic loan
word, all the descriptions and illustrations are European and there are no
references to the original works of the great Arab chemists of the Middle
Ages, such as Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi (Latinized as Rhazes), who had
such an enormous effect on the progress of early European chemistry. In
chapter 6 “Loadstones and Earths” (28 pp.) Wothers considers the origins of the alkaline earth
metals as well as magnetism and manganese, tungsten, graphite, and aluminium.
I might take exception to the Swedish tungsten being represented consistently as
tungste (pp. 171 and 173) since tung means heavy and sten means stone (whereas ste means
nothing) and perhaps Berzelius being introduced as “the last of a long list of Swedish chemists” (p. 157), but these are
minor quibbles. The chapter is an interesting hotchpotch, as suggested in
the title, and it is difficult for the reader to follow a common theme.
Chapter 7 “The Salt Makers” (15 pp.) is a short chapter dealing with the halogens but ending
with 17 lines on Mendeleev's periodic table (together with a two-thirds-page
facsimile of the original, courtesy of the Master and Fellows of St
Catherine's). It is not entirely clear why HCl gas was called “marine acid air” by Priestley
which led to the term muriatic acid. I learned that nitric, sulfuric, and hydrochloric
acids are called mineral acids because they can all be obtained by heating
combinations of minerals (p. 180). As usual the discussion is limited to
western European – particularly English and French – contributions.
Chapter 8 “From Under the Nose” (29 pp.) looks at “the final group of the periodic table”. However, the periodic table and its groups
have nowhere been introduced previously, except in the short reference to
Mendeleev noted above. The chapters do not seem to consider the elements in
terms of their groups, although it may be at least partly implicit. As usual
in this gallimaufry, the chapter briefly mentions the rare earth elements on
its way to discussing in some detail the isolation and identification of the
noble gases. Wothers mentions the mineral “cleveite” (p. 227) in the
context of the discovery of terrestrial helium, without noting that it is an
impure form of uraninite. The final chapter “Unstable Endings” is just four pages long and very
briefly considers uranium, thorium, and radium before even more briefly
mentioning the transuranic and superheavy elements.
The book ends with 10 pages of endnotes which simply briefly list the
author, date, and page referred to. This is followed by a 12-page
bibliography with somewhat over a hundred references detailed, and a short,
but wholly inadequate, index.
I am unsure who the book is aimed at. It is presented as a trade book, that
is a book for the general public. But the level of presentation is extremely
variable – sometimes it is suitable for school children otherwise it is quite
advanced. I did not find it a good read – the swathes of cited text
interrupt the flow. It is a book to dip into during quiet moments. The book
is very Eurocentric: the first Far Eastern reference appears on p. 123 and
even then this refers to a Japanese translation of a European textbook in
1837. Needham's monumental work Science and Civilization in China is first mentioned on p. 133 and then
only with respect to saltpetre and gunpowder. The great Arab chemists are,
as mentioned above, largely ignored.
So what about the mineralogists, to whom this review is primarily addressed?
Berzelius' quotation about the differences between chemists and
mineralogists is particularly apposite here. On the other hand, as an update
to Weeks' classic, it has some interesting anecdotes. I guess, if it were in
your library you might dip into it while waiting for your tutees to arrive.
But I doubt if you would suggest it for your students.
References
Berzelius, J. J.: Afhandlingar I Fysik, Kemi och Mineralogi, No. IV, 1815.
Clayden, J., Greeves, N., Warren, S., and Wothers, P.: Organic Chemistry, 1st Edn., Oxford University Press, USA, 2000.
Keeler, J. and Wothers, P.: Why Chemical Reactions Happen, Oxford University Press, 2003.
Keeler, J. and Wothers, P.: Chemical Structure and Reactivity: An Integrated Approach, 2nd Edn., Oxford University Press, 2013.