Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood

by Oliver Sacks

said—better than any metal—so it drew

later learned was the “lithotomy position”). My mother’s obstetric bag and anesthetic bag were always ready to be grabbed

particularly loved prime numbers, the fact that they were

thought I might be mentally defective. Fires I laid could never be

chemical group or family, and nature treated them, with their

discs and radiating metal sectors that could yield

Principles). 3 Mendeleev was not the first to see some significance in the

not

dark after being exposed to daylight, others glowed only

fifty years later, that while fluorescents had evolved in all sorts of ways, filament bulbs remained as popular as ever,

formalin in my bedroom for many years.