Part of the appeal of the Boyle myth may be that it promised a clean break: a waymark at which alchemy was cast aside and chemistry took over. But such changes rarely if ever happen in science, and ...

Alchemy is making a comeback. No, wizards haven't learned how to transmute lead into gold and they haven't found any rejuvenating elixir of life. But the scholars who write the history of science and ...

It was the alchemical quest that was midwife to the birth of modern science: how to transform common elements into precious gold. Now researchers have found a bacterium that could fit the bill as a ...