International Year of Chemistry 2011: Alloys and Symbols. Rodin's The Thinker

Abstract

This first of a series of articles celebrating the International Year of Chemistry is dedicated to the most fundamental and yet rarely discussed issue: transformation of pieces of matter by artists into symbols of human actions and thought. The empirical manipulation of materials, such as the extraction of metals from ores, existed long before chemistry emerged as a science. Metallurgy was known as early as the fifth to sixth millennium BCE. Silver, copper, and tin were used, and meteoric iron was known in ancient Egypt as “daggers from heaven.” Bronze appeared in Europe in the third millennium BCE, the technique of smelting probably having been brought there from the Near East. Bronze became of such importance that it eventually gave its name to the entire epoch—the Bronze Age. Bronze is a copper-based alloy, with tin being its other …