The Periodic Table Tim Radford Celebrates Chemist Primo Levi’S Extraordinary Short-Story Collection

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Paracelsus (1493–1541) expanded the his practical experience led him to question thus served as atoms, while avoiding the sulfur–mercury dyad by adding a third whether sulfur, mercury and salt really were mathematical objection against indivisibil- principle, salt. He claimed that these “three constituents of substances, or merely products ity. A crucial caveat, however, was that they first things” underpinned all matter, not just of fire and chemical processes. could also carry properties such as size or metals. In a deeply religious culture, this triad Van Helmont’s approach influenced Robert motion, allowing Boyle and other corpuscu- conveniently corresponded to the Christian Boyle, Royal Society co-founder and advo- larians to relate the distinctive properties of trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. cate of mechanism, who expressed similar materials to the “texture” of their corpuscles. Paracelsus did not propose a universal form doubts in The Sceptical Chymist (1661). Boyle Chemistry, medicine and mechanism all of matter. He argued that every substance was equated elements and principles in a purpose- contributed to solving the early modern mat- reducible to particular forms of sulfur, mer- fully loose definition, as “primitive and sim- ter problem. In the 1660s, experiment alone cury and salt. Thus, the salt of wood is not ple Bodies of which the mixt [compound] could not demonstrate the deep structures the same as the salt of gold, and might have ones are said to be composed, and into which of matter, as Boyle himself recognized. Such very different pharmacological properties. they are ultimately structures were invisible to the eye, and even The system therefore catered primarily to resolved”. On these “Chemistry, a vaunted new technology, the microscope, medical practitioners’ needs. It contrasts with grounds, he dis- medicine and failed to reveal their elementary composi- the seventeenth-century rise of mechanical qualified Paracel- mechanism all tion. Yet these challenges created scope for philosophies, which tried to account for mat sian principles as contributed to theoretical innovation, allowing natural phi- erial change in terms of the action of particles physical constitu- solving the early losophers to mix and match from a diversity governed by contact mechanics. French nat- ents of compound modern matter of models and explanations. This pluralism ural philosopher and priest Pierre Gassendi bodies. Nor did he problem.” of approach continued into the eighteenth sought to revive ancient atomism in a Chris- find experimental century. From Joseph Priestley’s work isolat- tian framework, whereas philosopher René evidence for Paracelsus’s salt. However, as a ing gases in England to Antoine Lavoisier’s Descartes proposed an entirely mechanistic keen believer in transmutation, Boyle was ingenious apparatus for weighing chemi- universe based on contiguous point particles. willing to entertain the possibility that metals cal products in France, that array yielded a In practice, a chemist might select aspects contained a ‘mercury’ and ‘sulfur’ — and, in sequence of theoretical insights and experi- from all these outwardly contradictory sys- a later work, even claimed to have extracted mental techniques that eventually allowed a tems. The Flemish physician Jan Baptist van metallic ‘mercuries’ himself. new vision of atomic structure to emerge. ■ Helmont (1580–1644) adopted some mecha- Boyle’s solution was to propose a universal nistic ideas, for instance when explaining how “catholic matter” that clumped into semi- Jennifer Rampling is assistant professor metals dissolved in mineral acids through permanent “corpuscles” (small bodies). of history at Princeton University in reduction into smaller parts. Despite criticiz- These were the smallest particles divisible by New Jersey, where she teaches the history of ing Paracelsian medicine, he was also influ- human art, so their own composition could early modern science. enced by Paracelsus’s notion of principles. Yet not be investigated. Functionally, corpuscles e-mail: [email protected] IN RETROSPECT The Periodic Table Tim Radford celebrates chemist Primo Levi’s extraordinary short-story collection.

n The Periodic Table, Primo Levi — and delights of science. moment he learnt while conducting assays scientist, poet, writer — makes chemis- His narrative briefly invokes the rise of that to conquer matter is to understand it; try a metaphor for his life. But it becomes fascism, the folly of British Prime Minister and that that knowledge — he calls it the Imore than that. Chemistry shapes his life, Neville Chamberlain at Munich, the fall of missing link between the worlds of words defines his life, in Auschwitz even saves Prague, General Francisco Franco’s conquest and of things — is in turn central to under- his life. It becomes his living. In the end, of Spanish Republican forces in Barcelona, standing the Universe. For him, the periodic chemistry becomes everything: life itself. the sustained bleakness of all-out war in the table was “poetry, loftier and more solemn When, in 1985, I reviewed Raymond 1940s, the nightmare of the concentration than all the poetry we had swallowed down Rosenthal’s translation of Levi’s collection of camps and the cruel post-war struggles to in liceo [secondary school], and come to short stories (by then a decade old), I called it survive and rebuild. think of it, it even rhymed!” gold. I wish I’d also said what I thought at the Literary references are scattered through, time: that this was a book that people would among them Thomas Mann’s The Magic ELEMENTAL STRUGGLES still be reading in 100 years. With each re- Mountain, Emile Zola’s Germinal and the Levi was born in Turin in 1919. What reading, the chapters based on memoir seem work of fellow Italian–Jewish political exile, narrative there is begins with his ances- even more perceptive, more profound. writer and physician Carlo Levi. But the try, peopled by individuals “noble, inert Western European history is embedded in narrative stubbornly returns to elemental and rare”, but poor compared with “other the work’s brief time span, from Levi’s student chemistry. He recalls in the story ‘Iron’ the illustrious Jewish communities in Italy years to the post-war recovery of Italy. Each and Europe”. The story is ‘Argon’, from the title of the very different 21 tales is the name THE PERIODIC TABLE Greek for inactive. His memories of barbe of an element at that story’s core, sustain- A Nature special issue and magne (uncles and aunts in the dialect ing the architecture of a book that delivers a go.nature.com/periodictable of his native region, Piedmont) become sharp sense of the compulsion, ambiguities a reflection on words, in Hebrew and

Primo Levi, literary alchemist and Auschwitz survivor.

Yiddish too. The links between obdurate he secretly made fatty acids by oxidizing declares his ambition to seek more stories matter and precarious survival become paraffin, tried to make fritters of cotton and of luck, intuition and stratagems on which more intimate with time, as he graduates, forced himself to ingest glycerine. He identi- the working chemist relies, stories “in which begins a career, finds ways just to stay alive. fied and stole iron–cerium rods found in the stolid matter manifests a cunning intent upon The realization that zinc samples must be laboratory. Whittled down to make cigarette evil and obstruction, as if revolted against the impure to yield to acid triggers an insight lighter flints, these were bartered: “This is order dear to man”. In the post-war wreck- into the importance of difference and the how we won the bread which kept us alive age of Italy, he finds plenty of obstruction. A new place of the Jewish people in fascist until the arrival of the Russians.” down-at-heel factory manager in ‘Nitrogen’

MARCELLO MENCARINI/BRIDGEMAN MARCELLO Italy under Benito Mussolini, who ruled In his 1947 memoir If This Is A Man, commissions him to identify the unguent from 1922 to 1943. “Dissension, diversity, Levi had written unforgettably of the crazy that renders lipstick ‘kiss proof’. He decides the grain of salt and mustard are needed.” market forces in the camps, one of the great the starting point must be uric acid. The Fascism, however, “wants everybody to be testaments of cruelty, shame and despair search ends with Levi and his bride trying to the same and you are not”. in mid-century Europe. The stories of The amass urea from chicken dung and python Resistance to fascism in Italy was Periodic Table are poignant, acute and more excrement. something of a buffer against the country’s shaped. In one casual sentence in ‘Vanadium’, Such visceral realities are the lesson of the fascist racial laws. Levi achieved a first-class he recounts how, decades after the war, chemist’s trade, he writes. “Matter is matter, honours degree in chemistry. An unnamed when he was working with an industrial- neither noble nor vile, infinitely transform- military officer then gave him an enigmatic varnish business, able, and its proximate origin is of no impor- and ultimately futile job in faraway, unidenti- he found himself “To avoid tance whatsoever.” The book ends with the fied hills, to see if he could extract value from dealing with a starvation, he imagined odyssey of an atom of carbon, from the tailings of an asbestos mine. In ‘Nickel’, German from the secretly made calcium carbonate to carbon dioxide to leaf this rooting in rubble prompts another hymn Auschwitz factory. fatty acids tissue, to glucose and ultimately to the pulse to matter. “The entrails of the earth swarm As he wrote, “real- by oxidizing of energy in the hand that holds the pen. with gnomes,” he writes. The word nickel ity is always more paraffin.” Levi died in 1987, after falling from the is even derived from the German for ‘little complex than third-storey landing of his Turin home. His demon’ — creatures that might “let you find invention: less kempt, cruder, less rounded book lives on, a chemist’s book, a hymn to a treasure beneath the tip of your pickax, or out”. But crude, unkempt experience is trans- the elements and a testament to what he calls deceive and bedazzle you, making modest muted in this book. Literary alchemy is at “the strong and bitter flavour of our trade”. pyrites glitter like gold”. work. In the 2002 biography Primo Levi, Ian I have four anthologies of science writ- After the collapse of Italian fascism in Thompson notes that, in some ways, the clos- ing on my shelves. Levi is in all four, and his 1943, Nazi divisions occupied Milan and est Levi came to being a novelist was in the matchless short story ‘Carbon’ in three. I Turin. Levi joined the partisans, and was “daring and original” The Periodic Table, and think people will still be reading The Periodic betrayed. Imprisoned in Italy’s Repub- nowhere more so than in ‘Vanadium’. Table in 2085. ■ lic of Salò, a German puppet state, he was ‘Silver’ exemplifies that originality, too. subsequently shipped to Auschwitz. Here, It includes a little detective story, told by a Tim Radford is the author of his chemistry degree and ability to speak fellow chemist, of how intermittent batches The Consolations of Physics. He was German saved him — for slave work at the of silver nitrate papers supplied for X-ray science editor of The Guardian for 13 years. Buna rubber factory. To avoid starvation, imagery were spoilt. Mystery solved, Levi e-mail: [email protected]