Brock W. The History of Chemistry.A Very Short Introduction 2016

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Chemistry has always been the science of matter and a technology for creating new things through metamorphosis and transmutation. According to recent statistics there are now more than three million people in the world who call themselves chemists and they publish over three quarters of a million research papers annually. Most of these report the synthesis and properties of new materials. In 1800 the elements and compounds known to chemistry numbered only a few hundred; today, they number more than seventy-one million, or roughly one substance for every one hundred of the seven billion people now on earth.
Introduction
On the nature of stuff
The analysis of stuff
Gases and atoms
Types and hexagons
Reactivity
Synthesis
Epilogue