Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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31 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A mesmerizing tour of the elements, August 20, 2002
"It often happens that the mind of a person who is learning a new science, has to pass through all the phases which the science itself has exhibited in its historical evolution." (Stanislao Cannizzaro, Italian chemist, 1826 - 1910).These words had a powerful resonance for Oliver Sacks. When the gifted neurologist wrote his autobiography, he also wrote a history of chemistry as recapitulated through his own childhood experiences. He grew up in a very scientific family--his mother and father were physicians, and his uncle Dave (the 'Uncle Tungsten' of the title) was both a chemist and a business entrepreneur, who "would spend hundreds of hours watching all the processes in his factories: the sintering and drawing of the tungsten, the making of the coiled coils and molybdenum supports for the filaments, the filling of the bulbs with argon..." Uncle Tungsten allowed his nephew to perform chemical experiments in his laboratory, which contained samples of almost every element. Oliver's "physics uncle," Uncle Abe had a small telescopic observatory on top of his house, where he demonstrated the wonders of spectroscopy to his nephew: "The whole visible universe--planets, stars, distant galaxies--presented itself for spectroscopic analysis, and I got a vertiginous, almost ecstatic satisfaction from seeing familiar terrestrial elements out in space, seeing what I had known only intellectually before, that the elements were not just terrestrial but cosmic, were indeed the building blocks of the universe." No wonder young Oliver grew up with a love for the elements and their chemistry! Rarely do I read an autobiography and envy the author his childhood--most recent examples of this genre, e.g. "A Child Called 'It'" are grim, wailing texts--and that's not to say that Oliver didn't have his bad moments, too. He endured two horrible years at a Dickensian boarding school while London was being bombed by the Germans. For the most part though, his formative years were spent in a fantastic 'castle of the elements' where his "many uncles and aunts and cousins served as a sort of archive or reference library" to his enquiring mind. In "Uncle Tungsten," Dr. Sacks shares his learning experiences with us and in the process, writes a far more lucid history of chemistry and physics than any I've ever found in a textbook. He also takes his readers on a mesmerizing, personalized tour of the elements. If you enjoyed P.W. Atkin's quirky "The Periodic Kingdom" or Primo Levi's wonderful memoir "The Periodic Table," I can almost guarantee you'll fall in love with "Uncle Tungsten."
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18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Rediscover the curious child in you!, December 9, 2001
Oliver Sacks, best known for writing about the fantastic consequences of neurological abnormalities (Awakenings, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat), takes us on a journey through his childhood in Uncle Tungsten. Deftly mixing the most intriguing aspects of the history of chemistry with his own experiences as a boy and adding the spark of a unique writing ability, he's utilized the principles of chemical lab work to produce something new and different--a book that revels in the most fundamental aspects of exploring the physical sciences. Sacks was fortunate to be born into a family heavily composed of scientists: physicians, chemists, physicists, and metallurgists, like his "Uncle Tungsten." Both of his parents were physicians and indulged his curiousities by allowing him to set up his own lab in their house, where he familiarized himself with the history of chemistry by recreating many famous experiments and also trying many more of his own devising. Descriptions of his family life and his exploration into science are filled with wonder and with love for the world we live in. Uncle Tungsten is a book to relish--written in everyday language, not in stuffy scientific terms--a book filled with the joy of youth, the fascination of discovery, and the wonderment of life. I would recommend it to anyone interested in science and nature, to anyone trying to understand those around them who love science so much, and to anyone in junior high or high school who wonders why they have to study chemistry!
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30 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
God thinks in numbers, July 22, 2008
There are some surprises here: first of all, I honestly thought Sacks is a normal American, probably family immigrated from Eastern Europe in the early 20th century. No, he grew up in London as the youngest boy in a huge family of Jewish scientists, physicians, and industrialists. 100 cousins! Some family branches in South Africa, Palestine, Germany and elsewhere.
Also, I expected a normal autobiography, despite the ominous subtitle 'memories of a chemical boyhood'. I thought I would find out how the man got where he was to be much later. No, we don't. We only learn about his first 14 years. And we learn a lot about the history of chemistry, probably more than most readers would have opted for.
But we also learn the following:
A boy grows up in a huge house in London with a huge family, everything is paradise, there is emotion (from Ma) and stimulation (from all) and whatever a little boy needs.
Then there is WW2 and the boy and his elder brother get evacuated to a boarding school, which is the prototype of all horrors. Bullying drives the brother into paranoia and the hero into closing the shutters with science and chemistry inside and the rest of the world outside.
He is liberated after 4 years and moves back home, but things are not what they were. He remains in his insulation. He ignores the events of the world. Politics incl. Zionism is bullying. He dislikes the punitive God of the orthodox. He is only a chemist.
With puberty and the end of WW2 the infatuation ends, or rather goes subterranean/subcutanean. Sacks learns new things, among others he discovers marine biology, and he reads Cannery Row, which makes him long for America. (previous mentioning of literature is sparse, there is some interest in Wells' science fiction, and there is a fascination with 1984, but that is obviously ahead of itself)
I give it only 4 stars, because I do not like chemistry quite as much (as I worked for a chemical company for 20 years.)
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