Philip BallThe Elements
A Visual History of Their Discovery
Philip Ball has written more than 20 books on scientific topics, including Elegant Solutions: Ten Beautiful Experiments in Chemistry (which was awarded the Dingle Prize for books by the British Society for the History of Science), Critical Mass (which won the Aventis Science Books award in 2005), and A Very Short Introduction to The Elements, one of the VSI series from Oxford University Press. Philip is a presenter of the science history series Science Stories on BBC Radio 4. He holds a BA in Chemistry from the University of Oxford and a PhD in Physics from the University of Bristol, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and a board member of its magazine Chemistry World, in which he writes a regular column.
Introduction
1. The Classical Elements
2. The Antique Metals
3. Alchemical Elements
4. The New Metals
5. Chemistry's Golden Age
6. Electrical Discoveries
7. The Radiant Age
8. The Nuclear Age
Bibliography and Further Reading
