The Transmutations of Chymistry: Wilhelm Homberg and the Académie Royale Des Sciences, Hardcover

This book reevaluates the changes to chymistry that took place from 1660 to 1730 through a close study of the chymist Wilhelm Homberg (1653-1715) and the changing fortunes of his discipline at the Acad mie Royale des Sciences, France's official scientific body. By charting Homberg's remarkable life from Java to France's royal court, and his endeavor to create a comprehensive theory of chymistry (including alchemical transmutation), Lawrence M. Principe reveals the period's significance and reassesses its place in the broader sweep of the history of science.

Principe, the leading authority on the subject, recounts how Homberg's radical vision promoted chymistry as the most powerful and reliable means of understanding the natural world. Homberg's work at the Acad mie and in collaboration with the future regent, Philippe II d'Orl ans, as revealed by a wealth of newly uncovered documents, provides surprising new insights into the broader changes chymistry underwent during, and immediately after, Homberg. A human, disciplinary, and institutional biography, The Transmutations of Chymistry significantly revises what was previously known about the contours of chymistry and scientific institutions in the early eighteenth century.

About author(s):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.