Each episode page carries a synopsis, the structures of every compound discussed, pictures of each chemist with a link to their Wikipedia entry, and the complete bibliography behind the script.
An introduction to the podcast series.
Perhaps the first great experimental chemist. Priestley’s careful work uncovered oxygen and carbon dioxide, and foreshadowed ecology.
Newton’s apple, Galileo’s whisper, Franklin’s kite — and the myth of Wöhler’s urea synthesis as the origin story of organic chemistry.
The famous dream, re-examined — and the last remark of Kekulé’s that chemists should not overlook.
Pasteur separates enantiomers, van ’t Hoff and Le Bel give carbon a shape, and Kolbe loses his temper.
Fischer accepted that molecules have a fixed shape and used it to determine the structure of sugars, changing how chemists think about structure itself.