Uncle Tungsten
Memories of a Chemical Boyhood
by Oliver Sacks As a boy, Sacks' interest in chemistry was fueled by his many relatives who were chemists. His mother was the sixteenth of eighteen children, so Sacks had many uncles and aunts around. Two of his uncles ran a company called Tungstalite, which made light bulbs with tungsten wires. One of these uncles, Uncle Dave, was sometimes called Uncle Tungsten. He would show and tell Sacks all about the history of tungsten and lighting. Sacks had his own chemistry lab, in which he spent years copying the expiriments of past chemists and conducting his own projects.
Here Sacks gives us a history of chemistry, up to around 1920. At least half of the book is spent on the history of chemistry, but a considerable amount of the book is spent on his own life. Footnotes accompany most pages; one footnote says that Sacks may have gotten his fondness for footnotes from Mendeleev. Sacks rarely gives the first names of the chemists he writes about. Towards the end of the book, Sacks gives a scene in which he annoys his father by telling him about chemistry in an uninteresting fashion. Fortunately for us, the rest of the book does not carry a fanatical tone. This book includes an index. A word of warning: you are going to need a dictionary if you want to understand the whole book. Sacks has an erudite tone, and he uses Brittish and American spellings and words.
Happy reading.
: 3:01 PM
