Modern Authors

Sommering s reading list demonstrates how print culture both preserved and invigorated this ancient and medieval alchemical tradition. As the sixteenth century neared its end, however, consumers of alchemical literature increasingly supplemented these older texts with more modern authorities. Thus, for example, when in 1578 the Bohemian nobleman and alchemist Bavor Rodovsky mladsf z Hustiran (1526-ca. 1592) chose to translate into Czech what he deemed to be the most important alchemical literature, like... 

Frieder Lichtenthaler (Darmstadt), a modern authority on Fischer, has written extensively on his work [1-4]. In addition, Horst Kunz (Mainz) has commemorated the 150th anniversary of his birth and the centenary of the award of his Nobel Prize in a biographical essay, which provides additional insight into the man and his science [5]. 

Some of the medicines of this clafs of forbentia have been termed tonics by fome authors, as giving due tone to the animal fibre. But it fliould be obferved, that tone is a mechanical term, applicable only to muhcal firings, and like bracing and relaxation, cannot be applied to animal life except metaphorically. The fame may be obferved of the word readion, ufed by fome modern authors, which in its proper fignification is a mechanical term inapplicable to the laws of life except metaphorically,... 

The modern author Ruth Sime has written several articles and a book about the way in which the Nobel Prize committee overlooked Lise Meitner s work. R.L. Sime, Lise Meitner A Life in Physics, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1996. 

Book iv of B is on chemical principles. In 1668 Duhamel met Boyle in England and two chapters in the second edition (1669) of B contain experiments on the elasticity of air and refer to Boyle s work on it. C refers to many modern authors, including Boyle, Bacon, Gilbert, Willis, Hooke, Gassendi, Descartes, Pascal, Galileo, Torricelli, Guericke, Tachenius, and Erasmus Bartholinus. Boyle quotes Du Hamel s praise in C of his own Experiments and Observations touching Coldy 1665. Duhamel was the first Secretary of the Academic Royale des Sciences (1666-97). 

In what sense may one assume that the elements persist in compounds When one compares the obscure remarks of some modern authors on the subject with the insight already gained by philosophers of antiquity, one becomes convinced that in chemistry, just as in physics, a philosophic clarification of the fundamental concepts should promote scientific understanding as well. [Paneth, 1962, 3]... 

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