Alchemy

"The science in which Newton seems to have been chiefly interested, and on which he spent most of his time was alchemy." -- Arthur S. Eddington, physicist, 1938

"For many centuries scholars thought that chemical elements were stable and could not be transformed. This is why the alchemists were regarded as dreamers, charlatans, or idiots. But in the year 1919 the great English physicist Rutherford sided with the alchemists and transmuted nitrogen into oxygen and hydrogen by bombarding it with helium. That was the day of the vindication of the alchemical doctrine of transmutation." -- Andrew Tomas, author, 1971

"The Roman emperor Diocletian issued an edict in Egypt around A.D. 300, demanding that all books on 'the art of making gold and silver' be burned. The decree shows that the Roman government was certain that such an art existed. It would surely have been unnecessary to issue decrees banning this craft unless it were known to have been practiced." -- Andrew Tomas, author, 1971

"The words chemistry and alchemy are derived from the name of Egypt -- Khemt." -- Andrew Tomas, author, 1971

"The basic ingredient of Chinese alchemy was cinnabar or mercuric sulfide...." -- Andrew Tomas, author, 1971

"The opinion current among the practitioners of the alchemical art in China, India, Egypt, and Western Europe -- that mercury and sulfur had unusual properties for transmutation -- is really baffling. After all, it was a long way from Peking to Alexandria, and from Benares to medieval Paris. What was the primary source of this doctrine?" -- Andrew Tomas, author, 1971

"All these prohibitions on alchemy are very bewildering. A 'No smoking' sign in a train is put up because people have cigarettes in their pockets. What was the reason for these 'No goldmaking' orders? If there were no cases of illegal transmutation, it surely would not have been worthwhile wasting expensive parchment on long, sternly worded decrees." -- Andrew Tomas, author, 1971

"It is noteworthy that, according to ancient alchemy, gold was made from mercury or lead. In the periodic table of elements, the atomic number of gold is 79, that of mercury 80, and of lead 82 -- in other words they are neighbors. It was Mendeleyeff who in 1879 first formulated a table of the elements and arranged them in order of increasing weight according to their atomic structure. The question is -- had the alchemists discovered the table before Mendeleyeff?" -- Andrew Tomas, author, 1971

"Thus it seems that Anaxilaus believed that Democritus was involved in the imitation of silver...." -- Jackson P. Hershbell, professor, March 1987

"Transmutation of lead into gold isn't just theoretically possible - it has been achieved!" -- Anne M. Helmenstine, chemist, May 2001

"The modern interpretation of Newton is about as far as could possibly be from what Newton himself thought." -- Simon Schaffer, professor, November 15th 2005

"On the one hand, we can recognize him [Newton] as a scientist [alchemist], but on the other hand, he's pursuing an activity which we now label as a pseudoscience [gravitational physics]." -- Pamela Smith, professor, November 15th 2005

"Our project now must be to see Newton the way that Newton was, rather than trying to see Newton the way we want him to be." -- James Force, professor, November 15th 2005

"...we now know that most of the great minds of the period were involved in alchemy, including Robert Boyle, John Locke, Leibniz, any number of others." -- Bill Newman, historian, November 15th 2005

"There's a tradition of scholarship that was very popular in the Renaissance called the prisca sapientia, the primal wisdom. It claimed that there was a secret wisdom that was first transmitted by an archetypical figure—say, for example, Moses—and then passed down through a line of successors, usually including Pythagoras, Plato, and so forth, and that this wisdom was really the ultimate tool for understanding the universe. Newton clearly believed that." -- Bill Newman, historian, November 15th 2005

"There's no question that they [Newton's papers] were considered to be borderline scandalous. Newton died in 1727. By that time you're well into the Enlightenment, and alchemy had become the domain of dunces; it was associated with all sorts of useless medieval knowledge. So the fact that Newton had been a serious student of this obsolete and idiotic field was really problematic." -- Bill Newman, historian, November 15th 2005

Aleklett, K., et al., Energy dependence of 209Bi fragmentation in relativistic nuclear collisions, Physical Review C, Volume 23, Issue 3, Pages 1044-1046, 1981