The Age of Alchemy: The Secret History of Chemistry from Ancient Magic to Modern Science

For readers of Sam Kean and Bill Bryson, The Age of Alchemy uncovers a vibrant, interconnected world of forgotten artisans, scholars, and experimenters who, across millennia and continents, transformed mystical alchemy into modern chemistry.

"An awe-inspiring history of a critical scientific discipline." --Publishers Weekly, STARRED review

3,000 years ago, on the banks of the Tigris in what is now known as Iraq, a woman perfumer named Tappūtī mastered the control of temperature and the arts of distillation, calcination, condensation, filtering, purification, fixation, and sublimation, unknowingly staking her claim as the first chemist in history.

From Egyptian tombs and the dazzling workshops of Alexandria to Chinese emperors seeking immortality, The Age of Alchemy uncovers the hidden roots of alchemy and its transformation into chemistry. Kit Chapman brings to life forgotten innovators--women alchemists, artisan experimenters, and ingenious fraudsters--while challenging Eurocentric myths and celebrating the diverse cultures that forged our understanding of matter.

Blending vivid storytelling, forgotten history, and fascinating science, the book explores the meaning and impact of chemical knowledge--its power to heal, to harm, and to transform societies. It explores how alchemists inspired modern medicine, how the search for immortality led to both lethal elixirs and life-saving antimalarials, how pigments and alloys reshaped economies and empires, and how the old dream of transmuting metals was finally realized in nuclear physics. The Age of Alchemy invites readers to see chemistry not as a dry catalogue of formulas, but as a four-thousand-year human drama of curiosity, ambition, ingenuity, and resilience--a global story of how we learned to understand and manipulate the material world.  

Table of Contents:

Prologue

Part I Ancient Wisdom
1. Fire Emblems
2. Full Metal Alchemists
3. Paints and Perfumes
4. The City of Fake Gold
5. From the Ashes

Part II Immortality and Gold
6. Flamethrowers and Acid Baths
7. Elixirs of Life
8. The Emperor's Immortal Groove
9. The Riddle of Steel
10. Made in America
11. Faith and Fraud

Part III The Birth of Chemistry
12. Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know
13. Of Popes and Poisons
14. Secrets and Lies
15. The Man with the Golden Urine
16. Hidden Fire
17. Death of a Chemist

Epilogue

Acknowledgements
Bibliography
Index

Kit Chapman is an award-winning science journalist and historian specializing in the history of chemistry. He is the author of several acclaimed books and a lecturer at Falmouth University. Chapman lives in the United Kingdom.