Chemistry

Chemistry

I used to love chemistry. It was my first intellectual interest. I was ten. It was my gateway science. Why, I don’t remember; it might have had to do with Dr. Dolittle. I persuaded my parents to equip me with a chemistry laboratory one Christmas. I selected the apparatus and chemical samples from a catalogue I had somehow obtained. My excitement could not be contained. They ordered what I had requested and in due course a cardboard box arrived. I discovered it under their bed, so I knew my dream had come true. The wait for Christmas day was unbearable. Eventually it came very early in the morning—I was allowed to open the box. I still recall the thrill of taking out the various items of equipment: the flasks, retorts, funnels, filters, the test tubes—and the Bunsen burner. This was my special favorite—a chunk of real metallic chemistry equipment, gas powered, fierce. I couldn’t wait to fire it up in the kitchen. Then the chemicals: each in their own labeled tube, brightly colored, potent, combustible, magical. I did little experiments all day, there in the kitchen, with smells and chemical reactions. I couldn’t wait to learn more chemistry. What I chiefly recall today is the sheer pleasure of chemistry apparatus—heating a chemical in a test tube was a joy. I wonder how many little boys (or girls) experienced this pleasure at that time—before the whole thing was banned. Remember, I was ten. It taught me so many things, notably a sense of responsibility around dangerous objects (I was also heavily into knives). What did my parents make of it?

These recollections were prompted by reading Oliver Sacks’ Letters (edited by Kate Edgar, 2024). We first bonded (chemically) over childhood chemistry at a movie premier party of all places (Robin Williams was the star—terrible film). We talked about our shared early chemical enthusiasm, his more learned than mine. The letters bring Oliver back to me with full force—you need his own voice to get the full measure of the man. The weightlifting, the motorcycling, the swimming, the psychological torment, the brilliance, the humanity, the inhumanity, the bookishness, the humor, the verbal felicity (and sound). He was childhood friends with Jonathan Miller, also a dear friend of mine, whose mind he describes as “an atomic bomb”. We both moved on from youthful chemistry in the direction of the mind—or did we? Are we both really chemists of the mind? I rather think so: but without the chemical apparatus, the laboratory experiments, the sulphureous smells.