Alchemy is an ancient branch of natural philosophy, a philosophical and protoscientific tradition that was historically practiced in China, India, the Muslim world, and Europe. In its Western form, alchemy is first attested in a number of pseudepigraphical texts written in Greco-Roman Egypt during the first few centuries AD.
Pseudo-Geber is the presumed author or group of authors responsible for a corpus of pseudepigraphic alchemical writings dating to the late 13th and early 14th centuries. These writings were falsely attributed to Jabir ibn Hayyan, an early alchemist of the Islamic Golden Age.
Isis is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal published by the University of Chicago Press. It covers the history of science, history of medicine, and the history of technology, as well as their cultural influences. It contains original research articles and extensive book reviews and review essays. Furthermore, sections devoted to one particular topic are published in each issue in open access. These sections consist of the Focus section, the Viewpoint section and the Second Look section.
Corpuscularianism is a set of theories that explain natural transformations as a result of the interaction of particles. It differs from atomism in that corpuscles are usually endowed with a property of their own and are further divisible, while atoms are neither. Although often associated with the emergence of early modern mechanical philosophy, and especially with the names of Thomas Hobbes, René Descartes, Pierre Gassendi, Robert Boyle, Isaac Newton, and John Locke, corpuscularian theories can be found throughout the history of Western philosophy.
Allen George Debus was an American historian of science, known primarily for his work on the history of chemistry and alchemy. In 1991 he was honored at the University of Chicago with an academic conference held in his name. Paul H. Theerman and Karen Hunger Parshall edited the proceedings, and Debus contributed his autobiography of which this article is a digest.
The word chemistry derives from the word alchemy, which is found in various forms in European languages. Alchemy derives from the Arabic word kimiya (كيمياء) or al-kīmiyāʾ (الكيمياء). The Arabic term is derived from the Ancient Greek χημία, khēmia, or χημεία, khēmeia, 'art of alloying metals', from χύμα, from χέω. However, the ultimate origin of the word is uncertain. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, al-kīmiyāʾ may be derived from the greek "χημία", which is derived from the ancient Egyptian name of Egypt, khem or khm, khame, or khmi, meaning "blackness", i.e., the rich dark soil of the Nile river valley. Therefore, alchemy can be seen as the "Egyptian art" or the "black art". However, it is also possible that al-kīmiyāʾ derived from χημεία, meaning "cast together".
James Riddick Partington was a British chemist and historian of chemistry who published multiple books and articles in scientific magazines. His most famous works were An Advanced Treatise on Physical Chemistry and A History of Chemistry, for which he received the Dexter Award and the George Sarton Medal.
Gabriel Plattes (c.1600–1644) was an English writer on agriculture and science, and also now recognised as the author of the utopian work Description of the Famous Kingdome of Macaria, often attributed to Samuel Hartlib under whose name it was published.
Frank Sherwood Taylor was a British historian of science, museum curator, and chemist who was Director of the Science Museum in London, England.
Alchemy in the medieval Islamic world refers to both traditional alchemy and early practical chemistry by Muslim scholars in the medieval Islamic world. The word alchemy was derived from the Arabic word كيمياء or kīmiyāʾ and may ultimately derive from the ancient Egyptian word kemi, meaning black.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to alchemy:
Lawrence M. Principe is the Drew Professor of the Humanities at Johns Hopkins University in the Department of History of Science and Technology and the Department of Chemistry. He is also currently the Director of the Charles Singleton Center for the Study of Premodern Europe, an interdisciplinary center for research at Johns Hopkins. He is the first recipient of the Francis Bacon Medal for significant contributions to the history of science. Principe's research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Philosophical Society, the Chemical Heritage Foundation, and a 2015-2016 Guggenheim Fellowship. Principe is recognized as one of the foremost experts in the history of alchemy.
John Maxson Stillman (1852-1923) was a pioneer of the history of science in the United States. He was also the first head of the chemistry department at Stanford University, as well as its first Chemistry Professor. His most enduring work was the posthumously published book The Story of Early Chemistry, decades later republished as The Story of Alchemy and Early Chemistry.
Lychnos: Lärdomshistoriska samfundets årsbok is an annual academic journal published since 1936 by the Swedish History of Science Society. Articles are mostly in Swedish, with summaries in English, German, or French. A number of volumes have also been published in a monograph series called Lychnos-bibliotek, starting the same year as the periodical.
William R. Newman is Distinguished Professor and Ruth N. Halls Professor in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at Indiana University. Most of Newman’s work in the History of Science has been devoted to alchemy and "chymistry," the art-nature debate, and matter theories, particularly atomism. Newman is also General Editor of the Chymistry of Isaac Newton, an online resource combining born-digital editions of Newton’s alchemical writings with multimedia replications of Newton’s alchemical experiments. In addition, he was Director of the Catapult Center for Digital Humanities and Computational Analysis of Texts at Indiana University. Newman is on the editorial boards of Archimedes, Early Science and Medicine, and HOPOS.
William Hodson Brock is a British chemist and science historian.
Chymes was a Greco-Roman alchemist who lived before the third century. He is known only through fragments of text in the works of Zosimos of Panopolis and Olympiodorus of Thebes.
The Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry, founded as the Society for the Study of Alchemy and Early Chemistry in 1935, holds biennial meetings and a yearly Graduate Workshop, publishes the journal Ambix and a biennial newsletter Chemical Intelligence, and offers prizes and grants to scholars. It has a worldwide membership.
William Arthur Smeaton was a British chemist and historian of science, who wrote more than seventy-five articles and several books on the history of chemistry in France in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Henry Ernest Stapleton (1878-1962) was an English chemist, historian of chemistry, Arabist, linguist, and numismatist specializing in the history of alchemy and chemistry in the medieval Islamic world.
