In 1993, I wrote an essay-review in the New York Review of Books of David Knight’s book on Humphry Davy, which in many ways rekindled my long-dormant interest in chemistry. I am grateful to Bob Silvers for encouraging me in this.
My article ‘Brilliant Light,’ an early fragment of this book which appeared in The New Yorker, was brilliantly edited (and titled) by my editor there, John Bennet; and Dan Frank, at Knopf, has been crucial in helping to steer the book to its present form.
Soon after starting this book I had the great pleasure of meeting a boyhood hero, Glenn Seaborg, and I have subsequently met or corresponded with chemists all over the world. These chemists, too many to name, have been astonishingly hospitable to an outsider, an ex-boy-enthusiast, and have shown me wonders that the wildest science fiction of my boyhood could not have conceived, such as ‘seeing’ actual atoms (through the tungsten tip of an atomic force microscope), as well as humoring some nostalgic desires to see, once again, among other things, the deep blue of sodium dissolved in liquid ammonia; and tiny magnets levitated over superconductors cooled in liquid nitrogen, the magical, gravity-defying floating I had dreamed of as a child.
But, above all, it has been Roald Hoffmann who has been infinitely stimulating and supportive, and who has done more than anyone else to show me the marvelous thing which chemistry is now – and it is to Roald, therefore, that I dedicate this book.
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Oliver Sacks, Uncle Tungsten
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