This book reevaluates the changes to chemistry that took place from 1660 to 1730 through a close study of the chymist Wilhelm Homberg (1653-1715) and the changing fortunes of his discipline at the Academie Royale des Sciences, France's official scientific body. By charting Homberg's remarkable life from Java to France's royal court, and his endeavor to create a comprehensive theory of chymistry (including alchemical transmutation), Lawrence M. Principe reveals the period's significance and reassesses its place in the broader sweep of the history of science. Principe, the leading authority on the subject, recounts how Homberg's radical vision promoted chymistry as the most powerful and reliable means of understanding the natural world. Homberg's work at the Academie and in collaboration with the future regent, Philippe II d'Orleans, as revealed by a wealth of newly uncovered documents, provides surprising new insights onto the broader changes chymistry underwent during and immediately after Homberg. A human, disciplinary, and institutional biography, The Transmutations of Chymistry significantly revises what was previously known about the contours of chymistry and scientific institutions in the early eighteenth century.

"This clever book is a biography of a person—Wilhelm Homberg (1653–1715); an institution—the Académie Royale des Sciences; and a discipline—the biography of chymistry from 1670 to 1730. Lawrence M. Principe has thus accomplished the trifecta of intellectual history, using a significant but largely understudied individual to analyze an equally understudied period—the history of chymistry between Robert Boyle and Antoine Lavoisier. . . . I highly recommend this work and congratulate Principe for his latest achievement." - Isis

"The Transmutations of Chymistry is the work of a master in his field, full of insights and very well written. Its production values are high, with both footnotes and a full bibliography, and the fifteen-page 'Note on Sources' at the end is a gold mine of information for researchers not only in chymistry but in Parisian science under Louis XIV. It is a considerable achievement." - Annals of Science

"With this brilliant investigation, well-documented and written with enthusiasm, Lawrence Principe transforms our understanding of chemistry in the eighteenth century." - Revue d'histoire des sciences (Translated from French)