This book is a collection of essays, written by an international group of historians of chemistry, about some of the most interesting chemists dating back into the 18th century. The contributing authors are well-established biographers, and their subjects make a diverse cast of chemistry characters. Among the chemists covered are Robert Bunsen, Joseph Black, John Dalton, Lucretia Borgia, William Crookes, and Humphry Davy. These chemists come from all over the world, and from different eras. Together, this collection truly is a celebration of the wide range of personalities and characters that have worked in chemistry over the centuries.

For centuries, the southernmost region of the Florida peninsula was seen by outsiders as wild and inaccessible, one of the last frontiers in the quest to understand and reveal the natural history of the continent. Seeking the American Tropics tells the stories of the explorers and adventurers who-for better and for worse-helped open the unique environment of South Florida to the world.Beginning with the arrival of Juan Ponce de Leon in 1513, James Kushlan describes how most of the famous Spanish explorers never made it to South Florida, leaving the area's rich natural history out of scientific records for the next 250 years. It wasn't until the British colonial and early American periods that the first surveyors were commissioned and the first naturalists-Titian Peale and John James Audubon-arrived to collect, draw, and report the subtropical flora and fauna that were so unique to North America. Moving into the railroad era, Kushlan illuminates the activities of scientists such as Henry Nehrling and Charles Torrey Simpson alongside the dabbling of wealthy amateur naturalists. He follows the story to the 1920s, when tourism was flourishing and signs of ecological damage were starting to show. Years of wildlife trade, resource extraction, invasive species introduction, and swamp drainage had taken their toll. And many of the naturalists who had been outspoken about protecting South Florida's environment had also played a part in its destruction. Today the region is among one of the most thoroughly studied places on the planet-but at a cost. In this absorbing and cautionary tale, Kushlan illustrates how exploration has so often trumped conservation throughout history. He exposes how much of the natural world we have already lost in this vivid portrait of the Florida of yesterday.

This special book is a compilation of essays on a remarkable but little-known story that lasted over half a century of world-renowned physicist, the late Sir Rudolf Peierls and his wife Genia Kannegiser. Peierls collected a lot of prestigious awards in his lifetime, and in the beginning of WW2, he and Otto Frisch were responsible for the inception of the Anglo-American nuclear program (1940). He was also one of the key contributors in the research at Los Alamos during those turbulent times.Most previous books on Peierls have focused on his scientific research, while the contents for this volume sheds light on his private life in dramatic circumstances. The extensive contributions were not only gathered from the relatives of Genia, the couple's daughters, Landau's students, and from Russian and English archives, but they also include the unique perspectives of the author who is a professional theoretical physicist and is also fluent in Russian, his native language.So, this fascinating story of love, friendship and physics between Rudolf and Genia is being told for the first time from a surprisingly new angle through correspondence between Genia and Rudolf, memoirs and other documents, interesting and informal excerpts from Peierls' private 'diary' covering the years 1979-1994 that will take the reader on a journey through communism, world war, the trials and tribulations of the loving couple with distinctly very different personalities.

Transcendental Magic is a classic of occultism, prized for its wide-ranging wisdom, thorough guidance and revelatory contents. Written by Eliphas Levi in the mid-19th century, Transcendental Magic offers seekers of occult knowledge a bounty of guidance and knowledge. Informed by research spanning many centuries of arcane arts, the author offers us profound guidance to the ceremonial rituals one must perform in order to make contact with spirits and other non-corporeal entities of the universe. In Levi's explanations we encounter various figures of occult lore. Monad is synonymous with God; the creator of everything contained in our physical plane. Derived from the Pythagorean school, through Levi we learn how Monad interacts with the creation. This discussion is related to the Kabbalah, which attempts to define the relationship between what is infinite and what is finite.