Alchemy
The Alchymist (1775), an engraving

Hennig Brandt and the Discovery of Phosphorus

Distillations Article
Escape Room Game

Escape the Archives

Event
Science history photo collage

Love, Hate, and Sex from the History of Science

Distillations Podcast

Snakes and Letters

Distillations Article

Object Explorer
Museum
Deborah Harkness

Vulture: Inside the All Souls Convention With 400 Witches, Daemons, and Vampires
Media Coverage

The Masters of Nature

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Philadelphia Inquirer: Scans Reveal Secrets of Medieval ‘Harry Potter’ Book and Medical Texts at Penn
Media Coverage

WHYY: Age of Alchemy a “Must-See New Art Exhibit”
Media Coverage
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

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

Learn
Learn

Behind the Beaker
Research
Hiro Hirai

Hiro Hirai

People

Philadelphia Science Festival
Visit
Isaac Newton alchemical manuscript

Isaac Newton and the American Alchemist

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Bruce Moran

People

Historical Biographies
Learn

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

Fine Art
Collections

The Whole of Nature and the Mirror of Art
Museum

The Bolton Society
Research
Petrus Bonus, Pretiosa margarita novella [The Precious New Pearl], ca. 1450.

Books of Secrets: Writing and Reading Alchemy
Museum

Collections
Collections

Transmutations: Alchemy in Art
Museum
Our library collections span nearly six miles of shelves

The Othmer Library
Research

Add to Our Collections
Give

Fellow in Focus
Visit

Synthesis Book Series
Research
Pasteur studying the diseases of wine in 1863.

Fellow Friday
Research
Research fellow Roger Eardley-Pryor.

Research Activities
Research
17th-century scientists in the lab

Science and the Supernatural in the 17th Century

Distillations Podcast

The Alchemist in His Laboratory

Distillations Video
the number 200

Distillations Podcast Turns 200

Distillations Podcast
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

Distillations Podcast

The Secrets of Alchemy

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

What’s in a Name?

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The Alchemical Quest

Distillations Podcast
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

Distillations Podcast
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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