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Uncle tungsten: Memories of a chemical boyhood

2002; Wiley; Volume: 30; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1002/bmb.2002.494030029996

1539-3429

E. J. Wood,

History and advancements in chemistry

Sacks, Oliver; Knopf, New York and Picador, London, 2001, 337 pp., ISBN 0-330-39027-9, $25 or £17.99. This is not a book about biochemistry; it is about ”the other side“ mostly, namely inorganic chemistry, but I made no apology for reviewing it here briefly. Oliver Sacks, clinical professor of neurology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, is famous for his other books including Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. The book is autobiographical, about his intense interest in and love for chemistry in his early years. Uncle Tungsten, his uncle in London where he grew up during the war years, ran a factory making electric light bulbs, which of course work successfully, because they have tungsten filaments. Sacks was stimulated to learn more and more about chemistry, and chemistry was all around him at this time in his life. Not only was the atmosphere unforced, but educating oneself was perfectly natural and accepted and apparently unaffected by peer pressure to conform. It is a fascinating read with many amusing and illuminating (no pun intended) insights. As well as revealing a wealth of information about the Periodic Table, minerals, and the properties of the elements, it also tells us a lot about the discovery of radioactivity and about spectroscopy. Sacks did many of the experiments himself in his laboratory in a room in his parents' house in London (there is a chapter entitled ”Stinks and Bangs“). These would be totally forbidden under today's safety regimes in high schools, and whereas I am not especially in favor of youngsters blowing themselves up, I do believe that young people today are a little too protected from the sights and smells of real chemistry. Our students now have to wear protective clothing and goggles in the lab, experiments are done behind screens, and students will not even mouth pipette pure water. I'm sure it's very sensible (and it prevents lawsuits against schools, of course), but one can't help thinking that the young Sacks had a much richer experience of chemistry and was keen to learn and understand it because of this. Each year, Annual Reviews featured initial chapters of a biographical or philosophical nature by famous scientists, and a number of these have been collected into compendia entitled ”The Excitement and Fascination of Science.“ These were (and still are) a pleasure to read. One feels that Oliver Sacks experienced excitement and fascination with his science (mostly inorganic chemistry at that time) and that this encouraged his self-education, and one surmises his going on to become a medical doctor and eventually becoming interested in a very unique way in neurology. This book is a wonderful read for anyone with some knowledge of chemistry (others would find some of it hard going). Another reviewer has said, ”Read it to your children“; my advice is, ”Try to get your students to read it.“ Now there's a challenge.