Kit Chapman, "The Age of Alchemy: How Early Innovators Shaped Modern Chemistry" (Profile Books, 2026)

The first chemists were Sri Lankan forgers who crafted

unimaginably strong steel millennia before it should have been

possible. They were alchemists in Roman Egypt, who designed apparatus

still in use today. They were Stone Age leatherworkers, Tang Dynasty

herbalists and Mayan stoneworkers.

The Enlightenment is usually

credited with the origins of chemistry, but in truth, the science

blossomed gradually. As early innovators distilled, smelted, forged and

fermented their way through the centuries, they blurred science and

mysticism in search of answers to life's greatest mysteries.

In reading The Age of Alchemy: How Early Innovators Shaped Modern Chemistry (Profile Books, 2026), join

Kit Chapman on a global quest to achieve immortality, cure all disease