Clik here to view.
Mercury pollution from ancient Inca mines
It seems the Andean civilisations really were the ancient kings of heavy metal. Not only were they adept at mining and working gold, but they also used vermillion – a pigment based on cinnabar (mercury...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A case of mistaken identity
Pity the poor French chemist Bernard Courtois. Despite being the discoverer of iodine he has sunk into relative obscurity. And as a result the photograph that many sources acknowledge as being the man...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Howard Carter and the case of the Google Doodle
Heading over to Google today (other search engines are available) I noticed the rather intriguing Google Doodle shown above. Now I love the way Google updates it’s logo on specific days, but I have to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Bowood House and the discovery of oxygen
At the weekend I was off on a country jaunt to visit family. We went out to a delightful little pile in Wiltshire called Bowood House. However, despite all the science documentaries I’ve watched over...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Henry Moseley: the single most costly death of the war
Guest post by Chemistry World intern Dan Johnson It has often been said of Franz Schubert, the great Austrian composer, that if the mark of a genius is an early death, then he can be considered a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
50 years of Education in Chemistry
‘The history of science, more than of any other activity, shows men and women of every nation contributing to the common pool of organised knowledge and providing the means for enhancing human...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The discovery of Buckyballs
Guest post by Rowena Fletcher-Wood Among the many accidental discoveries through the ages is an experiment designed to probe carbon molecules in space, which unearthed a new terrestrial molecule. Harry...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Academic family: Sir William Ramsay
Guest post by Jessica Breen ‘The noblest exercise of the mind within doors, and most befitting a person of quality, is study’ – Ramsay A few years ago I had the pleasure of meeting Jack Dunitz at the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Oranges and Lemons
Guest post by Rowena Fletcher-Wood Scurvy plagued early sailors, and although many treatments were tried and promoted, a simple cure was masked for centuries behind a series of mistakes and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Funding for fiction’s favourite poison
‘As for monkshood and wolfsbane, they are the same plant, which also goes by the name of aconite.’ – Severus Snape, Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone by J. K. Rowling In Harry Potter’s very first...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Academic family: Sir Harold Kroto
Guest post by JessTheChemist Scientists have a responsibility, or at least I feel I have a responsibility, to ensure that what I do is for the benefit of the human race’ – Harry Kroto Thank you for...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Nylon – a bit of a stretch
Guest post by Rowena Fletcher-Wood I first heard the story of the discovery of nylon during a chemistry class in school – it was told as a serendipitous discovery. A young lab assistant, clearing up at...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Meet our guest bloggers – JessTheChemist
I am a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Process Research and Development (iPRD) at the University of Leeds. My research is on the synthesis of chiral amines relevant to the pharmaceutical...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Academic family: the Nobel prize in Chemistry 2014
Guest post by JessTheChemist ‘Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has a grander view?’ – Victor Hugo In 1873, German physicist Ernst Abbe reported that the resolution...
View ArticleClik here to view.
From Mould to Medicine
Guest post by Rowena Fletcher-Wood Excited, Mary Hunt tipped out the produce of her shopping: a large moulded cantaloupe. She had come across the cantaloupe by chance, and the ‘pretty, golden mould’...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Peering into Peer Review
‘I do not think it should appear in its present form’. Many a dejected researcher has read those words when their paper is summarily rejected by a journal. Rest assured, however, even the greatest...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Academic family – Robert Burns Woodward
Guest post by JessTheChemist In 1965 Robert Burns Woodward won the Nobel prize for chemistry for the synthesis of complex organic molecules, including natural products such as cholesterol, strychnine,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Christmas Lights – the invention of matches
Guest post by Rowena Fletcher-Wood It is Christmastime, and the season of light: everywhere you look, particularly after dark, is the twinkle of hundreds of little lights. As 2015 approaches, the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
LEDs and the International Year of Light
Guest post by Jen Dougan ‘May it be a light to you, in dark places. When all other lights go out.’ J. R. R. Tolkien Yesterday saw the opening ceremony to mark the start of the International Year of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Captain of hooks
Guest post by Rowena Fletcher-Wood Open your eyes and take a closer look: sometimes that’s all it takes to realise a new invention has been with you all along, stuck, perhaps, to the cuffs of your...
View Article