History of Chemistry The history of chemistry involves a journey from

The history of chemistry involves a journey from its magical and mythological origin to the highly complex and analytical science that it is today. Chemistry, the science which explains the composition of matter and the changes that different forms of matter undergo, did not gain much momentum until the seventeenth century. Prior to the 1600's, the study of chemistry languished in a prescientific period, suffering from some prominent misconceptions and untenable theories. Advances made in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have brought chemistry to such an advanced state that we are able to examine the composition of material on an atomic, and even a subatomic level.

Beginning with the use of fire, humans have observed the transformation of matter. Fire burns wood to produce ash, and meat becomes cooked over flame. These changes, known to primitive humans, were part of daily survival. As civilization developed in China, Mesopotamia, and Egypt, artisans performed further transformations to produce a variety of dyes, medicines, glasses, perfumes, and metals.

The Greeks regarded change as a universal phenomenon, but paid little attention to actual chemical processes; depending purely on speculation, they gave little experimental evidence for their conclusions regarding matter. Aristotle, in the 4th century BC, did come so far as to propose the existence of a primeval matter and four qualities: heat, cold, wetness, and dryness. The mythological gods used the "e

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evolution in chemical theory, largely at the hands of one man, Antoine Lavoisier" (119). Again, Lavoisier emerges as the prominent figure in the history of chemistry. Lavoisier was responsible for first removing oxygen from the air, and, by a masterly series of quantitative experiments, he determined that it had fixed and ascertainable properties. The most outstanding development in chemical theory during the quarter century following Lavoisier's death was the atomic theory of John Dalton (17661844). Asimov tells us that Dalton explained the constant composition of every pure chemical compound, as well as the law of multiple proportions in which "two elements frequently combine, as in the case of the two wellknown oxides of carbon (carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide)" (120). If chemistry was to become entirely quantitative, it would prove necessary to establish a systematic method for assigning atomic weights. The culmination of the atomic weight program was the "formulation in 1869 by Dmitry Mendeleyev and in 1871 by Lothar Meyer of the periodic table, which systematized the large number of elements according to their atomic weights" (Multhauf 326). Now it would be possible to correlate the physical and chemical properti

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