Mendeleyev's Dream: The Quest for the Elements

Paul Strathern

St. Martin's Press, Apr 21, 2001 - Science - 308 pages

In this elegant, erudite, but entertaining book, Paul Strathern, the award-winning novelist and expositor of complex ideas, unravels the dramatic history of chemistry through the quest for the elements.

Framing this history is the life story of the nineteenth-century Russian scientist Dmitri Mendeleyev, who fell asleep at his desk and awoke after conceiving the periodic table in a dream-the template upon which modern chemistry is founded and the formulation of which marked chemistry's coming of age as a science. From ancient philosophy through medieval alchemy to the splitting of the atom, this is the true story of the birth of chemistry and the role of one man's dream.

What people are saying

Review: Mendeleyev's Dream

User Review - Goodreads

Overall a decent book on the history of chemistry, but the author clearly had biases regarding certain figures and their discoveries/research/personal lives etc. It also took a while to read because ...

Review: Mendeleyev's Dream

User Review  - Jie Wen - Goodreads

Jie Wen Guan Due Date: 9/6/12 ISM Dear ISM teachers, The book I choose to read was Mendeleyev's Dream: The Quest for the Elements by Paul Strathern. The author is telling about Mendeleyev and the ...

About the author

Paul Strathern was born in London in 1940. He studied physics, chemistry, and math at Trinity College, Dublin, before switching to philosophy. He is the author of several novels, including A Season in Abyssinia, which won a Somerset Maugham prize, and two highly successful series of short introductory books, Philosophers in 90 Minutes and The Big Idea: Scientists Who Changed the World. Paul Strathern lectures in philosophy and science at Kingston University.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Mendeleyev's Dream: The Quest for the Elements
• Author: Paul Strathern
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 2001
• ISBN: 0312262043, 9780312262044
• Length: 308 pages
• Subjects: Science / Chemistry / General; Science / History