History of Chemistry

Ancient history (Early metallurgy)

40,000 BCE

The earliest recorded metal employed by humans seems to be gold with can be found free. Small amounts of natural gold have been found in Spanish caves used the late Paleolitic period.

Problems encountered with alchemy

1855 BCE

There were several problems with alchemy, as seen from today's standpoint. There was no systematic naming scheme for new compounds, and the language was esoteric and vague to the point that the terminologies meant different things to different people.

Ancient history(Iron Age)

1200 BCE

The extraction of iron from its ore into a workable metal is much more difficult than copper or tin. It appears to have been invented by the Hittites in about 1200 BC, beginning the Iron Age. The secret of extracting and working iron was a key factor in the success of the Philistines

Ancient history(Ancient World)

420 BCE

Empedocles stated that all matter is made up of four elemental substances—earth, fire, air and water. The early theory of atomism can be traced back to ancient Greece and ancient India.

The philosopher's stone

18 BCE

Alchemy is defined by the Hermetic quest for the philosopher's stone, the study of which is steeped in symbolic mysticism, and differs greatly from modern science. Alchemists toiled to make transformations on an esoteric (spiritual) and/or exoteric (practical) level.

Alchemy in the Islamic World

9 BCE

In the Islamic World, the Muslims were translating the works of the ancient Greeks and Egyptians into Arabic and were experimenting with scientific ideas

Ancient history (bronce age)

6 BCE

Certain metals can be recovered from their ores by simply heating the rocks in a fire or higher temperature copper, a process known as smelting.

Ancient history(Classical antiquity and atomism)

4 BCE

Philosophical attempts to rationalize why different substances have different properties (color, density, smell), exist in different states (gaseous, liquid, and solid), and react in a different manner when exposed to environments, for example to water or fire or temperature changes, led ancient philosophers to postulate the first theories on nature and chemistry.

Medieval alchemy

3 BCE

The elemental system used in Medieval alchemy was developed primarily by the Arabian alchemist Jābir ibn Hayyān and rooted in the classical elements of Greek tradition.[14] His system consisted of the four Aristotelian elements of air, earth, fire, and water in addition to two philosophical elements: sulphur, characterizing the principle of combustibility; "the stone which burns", and mercury, characterizing the principle of metallic properties.

Early chemistry

Dec 24, 1556

Practical attempts to improve the refining of ores and their extraction to smelt metals was an important source of information for early chemists in the 16th century, among them Georg Agricola (1494–1555), who published his great work De re metallica in 1556.