The New Alchemists: Breaking Through the Barriers of High Pressure

by Robert M. Hazen

Spanning centuries of top-notch science, bitter rivalry, outright fraud, and self-delusion, the author weaves a narrative centered around the brilliant, often eccentric, and controversial pioneers of high-pressure research. These new alchemists have subjected ordinary beach sand to tons of pressure to shed light on the extinction of the dinosaurs, learned that gases such as hydrogen and oxygen become dense metals lying deep inside large planets, and have transformed almost any carbon-rich material into diamonds. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

Genres: Science

304 pages, Hardcover

First published December 28, 1993

About the author

Robert M. Hazen, Senior Research Scientist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington’s Geophysical Laboratory and the Clarence Robinson Professor of Earth Science at George Mason University, received the B.S. and S.M. in geology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1971), and the Ph.D. at Harvard University in earth science (1975). The Past President of the Mineralogical Society of America, Hazen’s recent research focuses on the possible roles of minerals in the origin of life. He is also Principal Investigator of the Deep Carbon Observatory.