The experiments carried out by alchemists laid the foundations for modern science. Although alchemy tends to be popularly reduced to the quest to turn base metals into gold, it was based on a far more ...

Jacques Lagniet, “Recueil des plus illustres proverbes, divises en trois livres…” (1657-1663), engraving, on view in The Art of Alchemy (courtesy the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles) The “Great ...

The Chemical Heritage Foundation wants to set the record straight about alchemy. The medieval practice, often perceived as a dark art or pseudoscience, actually helped form the process of scientific ...

What do a blue glass necklace from the third or fourth century excavated in southern Russia and Jeff Koons’s shiny polyurethane resin Dom Pérignon Balloon Venus (2013) have in common, aside from the ...