How the Elements Were Named
October 7, 2019
Wothers (Chemical Structure and Reactivity: An Integrated Approach, coauthor), a Cambridge Teaching Fellow, debuts as a popular science writer with this thorough and well-researched exploration of how the elements were named. Wothers, who clearly loves his topic, is adept at the basics—the uses, chemical properties, and discoveries of various elements—but he also delights in the many controversies that raged over naming. For example, the French coinage of oxygen won wide acceptance only after weathering harsh Anglophone skepticism—an Irish physician suggested its Greek root words might more correctly be translated as meaning “sharp chin”—and nitrogen was agreed upon only after flirtations with “alkaligen” and “phlogisticated air.” Wothers is also interested in the historic wrong turns taken by early chemists, such as their theory of a substance, phlogiston, present in all things flammable. He enhances the science with short biographical sketches of the often colorful chemists responsible for significant discoveries, among them the controversial Joseph Priestly, forced to flee England after a mob burned down his house, and the extraordinarily shy Henry Cavendish, whose own servants were forbidden to see him. Wothers also gives a sense of how far the human study of elements has come, from the medieval belief that only seven metals existed, to 20th century work on radioactive elements. Readers even casually interested in the history of chemistry would do well to pick up this energetic survey.