Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood [Paperback]

It must have been both a blessing and a curse to grow up in such a family. Such a blessing to have parents that support and revere Sacks' mad-scientist chemistry experiments: when he came close to blowing up the house rather than forbid him to play with such chemicals they bought him a ventilation hood for his 'lab').

But something dark also runs through his story--his parents' strange detachment (his mother had him witness autopsies, if I recall correctly) and his brother's developing schizophrenia.

The total effect of all this is that the tone of the story sways from impersonal "here's how such-and-such a chemical makes such-and-such a compound" to a warm evocation of his intellectual and eccentric uncles (his darling Uncle Tungsten), to some of the stranger personal events that stop you short (his brother).

In the end I completely forgave Sacks his wandering, because the book seems to replicate precisely how Sacks' mind actually works--one moment completely involved with people, one moment completely involved with science, one moment combining the two in a marvelous combustion that is a hybrid of chemistry and literature.

Some day I want to have him to dinner and hear the rest of the story. What a guest he would make!

But the book has appeal to yet another kind of reader. Let me explain.
About two years ago, I wrote a review of Greenwood's "Chemistry of the Elements." I was surprised at the interest the review elicited, and I received some contacts from readers. It appears there are substantial numbers of "element enthusiasts" - people who generally are not professional chemists, but who have an enduring fascination with the chemical elements.
Through publication of his book, "Uncle Tungsten," Oliver Sacks has unquestionably advanced himself as the dean of element enthusiasts! The seamless transitions between Auntie Birdie, to Uncle Tungsten, to Curium and Einsteinium bespeak of a union with the chemical elements that is awesome.
The uncial-like etchings that introduce each chapter add a graceful touch. Not only are they decorative but they truly capture the mood of each chapter.

Many of us as children would have first discovered the wonder-full world of science, by doing chemistry "experiments" and studying minerals. Oliver Sacks, when recounting his boyhood, takes us back to that time, when chemical reactions with their magical color changes, would open a child's imagination. This could feed their curiosity, and in turn, put them on a path to knowledge.

Sacks writes with crystalline clarity. He describes his childhood passion for science in a way that is intense, immediate and refreshing. Have chemical properties ever been described so lyrically? " The color of lilacs in spring for me is that of divalent vanadium. Radishes for me evoke the smell of vanadium".

Science for young Sacks went well beyond the bounds of facts and figures. For him it was almost a sensual and at times a spiritual thing. He uses musical analogies when describing the harmonics inherent in the symmetries of the Periodic Table of Elements.

Sacks unashamedly worships his scientific heroes. The great French chemist Lavoisier, was the first to develop a symbolic notation for chemical reactions that went beyond the simple icono-graphics (shorthand or cryptology?) of the alchemists. Sacks equates Lavoisier's "Elements of Chemistry" with Isaac Newton's "Principia".

With the invention of new scientific languages (eg chemical equations), advancement was no longer limited to the empiricism of the laboratory bench. New materials and processes could be conceptualized as "thought experiments" or put on paper, well before their actual discovery. Sacks marvels at the ability of the pioneering chemists who predicted the existence of new elements, purely by reason and deduction.

To the average person, science is often seen as a dry, cerebral, passionless activity. Sacks's strength as a writer is his ability to capture the exuberance and enthusiasm that underpins and drives most scientific ventures.

Many of Sacks's observations, although superficially simple, are in fact, profound. He reminds us that the crystalline symmetries seen in minerals are reflections of underlying atomic structures. Metals look metallic because of their surface's interaction with photons.

His personal voyage takes us from the simple causes and effects of the pre-quantum mechanical world of his younger days to the probabilistic uncertainties of the causeless (blameless?) adult world.

Sacks' writing provokes the thought, "how many quantum-related phenomena can we now see in our macro-world?" The random walk of Brownian motion (at a micro level) is everywhere, but the inverse-squared relationships (at a macro level) that are a consequence of Brownian paths, lead us to those step-like jumps that define "events" all around us, for example, everyday photoelectric phenomena.

Oliver Sacks must take the prize for being the most accessible writer of things cerebral. He doesn't allow his own intelligence to get in the way of being a clear communicator. His modesty is engaging. The understated revelation that it was Sacks as a 12 year-old on a British radio quiz show in 1945, who got Glen Seaborg to reveal the discovery of the latest trans-uranic elements, is buried in footnote 11 on p210.

One of the key messages in these memoirs is the importance of mentors to the young, growing mind. It was the advice, influence and support from Sacks' relatives, in particular Uncle Dave (U. Tungsten of the title) that allowed Oliver's potential to blossom.

There is only one detectable blooper in this biography, but whether it was Uncle Tungsten's or the author's is unclear. It is on the subject of the origin of diamonds. On p37. Uncle Dave is quoted by Oliver as saying "they are brought to the surface in kimberlite, tracking hundreds of miles from the earth's mantle, and then through the crust, very, very slowly, till they finally reached the surface". Yet, on p129, one of Oliver's heroes, Sir Humphrey Davy is "burning a diamond". Most geological textbooks will tell you that for diamonds to make it through to the earth's surface they have to be transported from the mantle extremely rapidly to avoid being turned into graphite or CO2.

The underlying theme of "Uncle Tungsten" is the convergence and ultimate unity, between man, the material world and the transcendental. It takes somebody with the intellect and power of communication like Oliver Sacks to convince us that our physical world, the domain of mind and ideas, and whatever is beyond, are bound together inseparably.

This book has to be rated as one of the best memoirs of its kind. Oliver Sacks' earlier works must now become essential (re-) reading.