{"id":441,"date":"2009-01-15T12:09:47","date_gmt":"2009-01-15T12:09:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/2009\/01\/15\/coincidental_chemistry\/"},"modified":"2009-01-15T12:09:47","modified_gmt":"2009-01-15T12:09:47","slug":"coincidental_chemistry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/2009\/01\/15\/coincidental_chemistry\/","title":{"rendered":"Coincidental Chemistry"},"content":{"rendered":"

As at least Katherine<\/a> has noticed<\/a>, I’ve been sleeping with other magazines<\/del> moonlighting as a chemist<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\nIt was not until A Levels and a new school brought the hunched figure of Doc Beckett, cross-eyed and stain-fingered, into my life that I was able to rekindle my love affair with the sirens of my youth–and more besides. Doc learned his craft in a different age. We dehydrated glycerol to make acrolein and staggered around the lab coughing. We dropped nitrogen triiodide on the floor and spent the afternoon in a purple haze of tiny explosions. I made black powder and glycerol\/permanganate fuses. During a particularly recalcitrant reduction […] Doc returned with a brown bottle from a locked cupboard, ‘Potassium Cyanide’ written in copperplate on the label. I peeked in the cupboard once. What, I wondered, was ‘uranyl acetate’?\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\nBy a somewhat roundabout route I found waiting for me, on my return from Brisbane<\/a>, a letter from the same Doc Beckett. I was somewhat surprised: he’d been close to retirement when I did ‘A’ levels too many<\/em> years ago. He and the chap who’d read my Chemistry World<\/em> article, and had himself written to me saying that he knew Doc, still meet once a week to ‘practice science’. Apparently a home laboratory and drinks are involved.<\/p>\n

\nDoc Beckett tells me that electrolysis in U-tubes using transition metal electrodes and electrolytes of differing pHs gives nice colour changes. Redox reactions of organics, apparently, give unquantifiable results. It’s good to know that after a lifetime of chemistry some things are yet mysterious.<\/p>\n

\nAnd talking of lifetimes, in November last year Hans Freeman<\/a> died<\/a>. Until a few weeks before his death he still used a small office just round the corner from my own. We chatted occasionally, and I lent him my book<\/a> for a paper he was writing. <\/p>\n

\nThis afternoon I went into Hans’ office and took a look at his bookshelf. There was a long shelf of PhD theses, and a fair number of old text books. I have a soft spot for old books, and Kate had already been in and secured a copy of lectures by C. P. Snow<\/a>, which I might review at some point. I found an 1894 edition of German log tables (you can tell they’re German. They’re better organized), and an interesting-looking book called Humour and Humanism in Chemistry<\/em> by a Professor John<\/a> Read<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\nBrilliant!<\/em> I thought, thumbing through it. Endless material for the blog.<\/em> And indeed, it looks like an early instance of Lab lit<\/a>. Naturally, I’ve left the book at work, but googling it this evening I found some interesting snippets<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\nthe man of science is of necessity cold, formal and aloof; narrow in outlook; insensible to the finer human emotions; incapable of expressing himself in the common tongue; devoid of humour and humanism; and a stranger to the humanities [but] Prof. Read claimed that the study of chemistry, if approached befittingly, may reasonably take rank beside the so-called ‘humanities’, as a broadly educative, cultural, and humanising influence.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\nBut here’s the weird part. This evening I went looking for the letter from Doc Beckett, because I wanted to write about it. I picked it up and re-read it. And halfway down the page:<\/p>\n

\nI remember Prof John Read (St Andrews) working in Australia… He wrote a number of books, but it might be worth reading his _Humour and Humanism in Chemistry_\u2014it even contains a play!\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\nThank you Doc. And thank you, Hans. Chemistry never ceases to surprise me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As at least Katherine has noticed, I’ve been sleeping with other magazines moonlighting as a chemist: It was not until A Levels and a new school brought the hunched figure of Doc Beckett, cross-eyed and stain-fingered, into my life that … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=441"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}