Within a 20-minute walk from Notre Dame Cathedral, in the 3rd arrondissement of Paris, is the oldest house in the city: the house of Nicolas Flamel. If the name rings a vague bell, perhaps it’s ...

Even the most amazing accomplishments of modern-day science will never be able to hold a candle to the impossible powers promised by alchemy. It never delivered, but old-school alchemists weren’t ...

To the naked eye, the pendant once looked like solid gold, but anthropologist David Peterson of Idaho State University knows its secret. Using a powerful scanning electron microscope at the Center for ...

Can alchemy be described as a protoscience? Do ancient texts with obscure formulas and procedures describe mystic rituals and allegoric visions? Or do they record instructions to carry out real ...

The Story of Chemistry from Ancient Alchemy to Nuclear Fission. By Bernard Jaffe. New edition, revised and enlarged. Pp. xiii + 480. (London: Hutchinson's Scientific and Technical Publications, 1949.) ...