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Uncle Tungsten

Memories of a Chemical Boyhood

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About this listen

Uncle Tungsten radiates all the delight and wonder of a boy’s adventures, and is an unforgettable portrait of an extraordinary young mind.

Oliver Sacks evokes, with warmth and wit, his upbringing in wartime England. He tells of the large science-steeped family who fostered his early fascination with chemistry. There follow his years at boarding school where, though unhappy, he developed the intellectual curiosity that would shape his later life. And we hear of his return to London, an emotionally bereft ten-year-old who found solace in his passion for learning.

‘If you did not think that gallium and iridium could move you, this superb book will change your mind’ – The Times

 Brain & Nervous System Medical Neuroscience & Neuropsychology Physical Illness & Disease Professionals & Academics Psychology Psychology & Mental Health England

Continue the series
On the Move cover art
On the Move By: Oliver Sacks

Critic Reviews

This book is both a heartwarming account of a delightful, eccentric family life and an inspiring record of a remarkable intellectual odyssey.
The amalgamation of personal recollection and scientific history makes a luminous, inspiring book.
Uncle Tungsten is really about the raw joy of scientific understanding; what it is like to be a precocious child discovering the alchemical secrets of reality for the first time: the sheer thrill of finding intelligible patterns in nature.
All stars
Most relevant
This is an amazing story of those times when great discoveries in chemistry were still to be made... gaps still remained in the Periodic Table and remaking ingredients were readily agrarian at the local hardware store...
The story was well presented (although I'm guessing the narrator wasn't a science major), making it believable and warm... a task not easily accomplished for such taxing Subject matter.
Worth listening to in digestable segments..
I hope they will be be of these Scientist stories and but I'm worried these authors argon.....

I use chemistry books, but only periodically

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