The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements

by Sam Kean

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Kean walks through the periodic table element by element, telling the human stories behind each square: Marie Curie and radium, Lise Meitner and fission, Seaborg and the transuranics, gallium spoons that melt in tea. The result is a history of science told as a series of chemical biographies.

Published:: 2010
Pages:: 400

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In the Conversation

In this collection, The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements references 3 other books.

It draws on A Short History of Nearly Everything, The Double Helix and Einstein.

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What This Book Draws On

The books Kean references and why each one mattered to the argument.

Kean cites Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything as a model for narrating scientific history through human anecdotes, and draws specific stories from its chemistry chapters.

References

A Short History of Nearly Everything

by Bill Bryson

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Watson's The Double Helix is used as the template for Kean's treatment of twentieth-century scientific rivalries, including the element-naming fights between American and Soviet labs.

References

The Double Helix

by James D. Watson

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Isaacson's Einstein biography is drawn on for Kean's account of Einstein's photoelectric-effect work and its role in quantum theory's treatment of atomic spectra.

References

Einstein

by Walter Isaacson

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Intellectual Lineage

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Directly cites

A Short History of Nearly Ev...

The Double Helix

Einstein

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The Origin of Species

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