May 19, 2008

Science In The Attic

Posted by Lisa Jarvis on May 19, 2008 in Chemistry is Everywhere, Uncategorized

Ah, early animal testing. The illustration to the right is from La Chimica in Famiglia, an Italian book written in 1886 by Gustavo Milan, who aimed to teach chemistry to girls. The setup is that a wealthy chemist is introducing his granddaughter Faustina to chemistry by relating it to her daily tasks. This particular slide demonstrates nitrogen’s inability to sustain life. No worries, PETA, the bird is saved at the last minute. But the book is an interesting example of how science was being geared toward the fairer sex in centuries past. The page was thoughtfully passed on to me by Paul Bernasconi, a chemist at BASF and a longtime C&EN reader. I met Bernasconi at a recent dinner at a conference in Cambridge (Massachusetts, not the U.K.), and we got on the topic of old science books. He mentioned he had been accumulating old, often rare books on science and had some particularly interesting items on women and chemistry. He was kind enough to send me some pages from his collection.

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Life And Death

Posted by Rachel Pepling on May 19, 2008 in Ripped From the Pages, The Editor's Blog

There’s lots of discussion fodder in this week’s editorial. Rudy highlights several articles from this and last week’s issues:

• Jean-Francois Tremblay’s cover story, “Sourcing From China“
• A trio of heparin contamination stories in the May 12th issue
• William Schulz’s story on lethal injections (subscription required)

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Mercury Fountains

Posted by Sarah Everts on May 19, 2008 in Chemistry is Everywhere, Where is C&EN?

Barcelona, Spain, is rife with decorative fountains, so why not one flowing with mercury? As someone with a modicum of sense and some retirement savings, I normally avoid streaming pools of toxic metals, but this one sort of found me. On a trip to the Catalonian capital this weekend, I decided to check out a museum dedicated to the surreal artist Joan Miró. Entering the permanent exhibit, I saw a rather lovely fountain. On closer inspection, it was flowing with a silver liquid. Yup, mercury.

So the American artist Alexander Calder, better known for his amazing hanging mobiles, built the mercury fountain for the Spanish pavilion of the World Fair in Paris, back in 1937. For context, the mercury fountain was exhibited right next to great artworks such as Picasso’s Guernica and Miro’s The Reaper (an antiwar mural that has disappeared) at the World Fair. Calder donated the fountain to the Miro museum as a token of friendship with Miro.

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