Alchemy
Photo of an old manuscript

The Newton Mess

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Engraving of alchemist and royalty

Dr. Butler and the Quest for the Philosophers’ Stone

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Page from Isaac Newton’s copy of the Preparation of the [Sophick] Mercury for the [Philosophers’] Stone

Science History Institute Receives NEH/AHRC Grant
Press Release
A bearded, elderly alchemist in a fur-trimmed coat leans close over a tabletop experiment

The Applied Arts of Alchemy

Event
Oil painting of an alchemist in his workshop in the 1600s

Atlas Obscura: 6 Fascinating Medical Marvels in Pennsylvania
Media Coverage
A man in a mine, wearing breathing apparatus and holding a lantern, finds asphyxiated miners. Wood engraving, ca. 1900.

The Alchemical Origins of Occupational Medicine

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Engraved portrait of man

Paracelsus, the Alchemist Who Wed Medicine to Magic

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The Alchymist (1775), an engraving

Hennig Brandt and the Discovery of Phosphorus

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Science history photo collage

Love, Hate, and Sex from the History of Science

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Snakes and Letters

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Object Explorer
Museum

The Masters of Nature

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Portrait of alchemist in his lab

Interview: Curator Elisabeth Berry Drago

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The Alchemist and His Wife, ca. 1928, by Jacques Hammerer, after 17th-century original by David Ryckaert III.

Age of Alchemy
Museum
Megan Piorko headshot

Megan Piorko

People
The Alchemist in His Study with a Woman Making Lace

The Art Detective

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A 16th-century engraving of an alchemist adding a scorpion to a mixture. (Wellcome Library)

The Language of Alchemy

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Ute Frietsch

Ute Frietsch

People
Coloring Chemistry

Learn
Learn

Behind the Beaker
Research
Hiro Hirai

Hiro Hirai

People
Isaac Newton alchemical manuscript

Isaac Newton and the American Alchemist

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Bruce Moran

People
Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev

Historical Biographies
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The Alchemical Quest
Museum

Rare Books
Collections
James R. Voelkel headshot

James R. Voelkel

People

Elisabeth Berry Drago

People

Painting Like It’s 1699

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Recherches Chimiques

Materials Matter

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Trial by Fire

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Deborah Harkness

Facts and Fictions

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Detail from An Alchemist’s Laboratory

Gold, Secrecy, and Prestige

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The Shannon Portrait of the Hon. Robert Boyle F. R. S., by Johann Kerseboom, 1689. Science History Institute/Will Brown

Robert Boyle
Historical Profile

Synthesis Book Series
Research

Fellow in Focus
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Petrus Bonus, Pretiosa margarita novella [The Precious New Pearl], ca. 1450.

Books of Secrets: Writing and Reading Alchemy
Museum

Fine Art
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Transmutations: Alchemy in Art
Museum

The Whole of Nature and the Mirror of Art
Museum

Collections
Collections

The Bolton Society
Research

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Research fellow Roger Eardley-Pryor.

Research Activities
Research
Our library collections span nearly six miles of shelves

Othmer Library
Research
17th-century scientists in the lab

Science and the Supernatural in the 17th Century

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The Alchemist in His Laboratory

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the number 200

Distillations Podcast Turns 200

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Mark of Pierre Viart

Of Woodcuts and Metalcuts

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In the Middle Ages, St. Thomas Aquinas helped create the Western model of university education. Aquinas’s teacher Albertus Magnus wrote on alchemy and was so famous that many books he didn’t write were attributed to him, including the Liber secretorum. (R

Albertus Magnus, Mineralogy, and the Secrets of Women

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alchemical painting

Alchemy’s Rainbow: Pigment Science and the Art of Conservation

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Recipes and Extracts on Alchemy, Medicine, Metal-Working, Cosmetics, Veterinary Science, Agriculture, Wine-Making, and Other Subjects

The Philosophers’ Stove

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Double Vision

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Natural Magick

Laws of Attraction

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Party Spirits

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Alchemy After Dark

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The Unsuccessful Alchemists - Trying to Make Political Gold for Blaine out of Anti-Cleveland Dross (1882)

Political Potions

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The Secrets of Alchemy

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A depiction of Jābir ibn Hayyan, after a 15th century portrait.

What’s in a Name?

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The Alchemical Quest

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Title page of Boyle’s Sceptical Chymist

Alchemists, Unite!

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Query 31 in Opticks

Last Words

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Playing It Safe?

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Novum Organum

Roads to Revolution

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Pandora, That Is, the Noblest Gift of God

Pandora’s Secrets

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Ptolemaic armillary sphere

Out of Obscurity

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Atalanta fugiens by Michael Maier

Maidens and Other Marvels

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Alchemical Reflection

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Making Modernity exhibition at the Museum at CHF.

Images of Modernity

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Alchemy

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Tyrocinium chymicum

Liar, Liar, Lead on Fire

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Detail of frontispiece from The Herball or Generall Historie of Plantes

London Calling

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Arabic astronomers

Seek Knowledge as Far as China

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Woodcut of Abu Mūsā Jābir ibn Hayyān

A Revolution in the Scientific Revolution

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Paracelsus Portrait

Paracelsus, Healer of the German Reformation

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Ibn Butlan’s Risalat da`wat al-atibba

Al-Kimiya: Notes on Arabic Alchemy

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