The last sorcerers : the path from alchemy to the periodic table / Richard Morris.

What we now call chemistry began in the cauldrons of mystics and sorcerers seeking not to make a better world through science, but rather to make themselves rich. But among these early magicians, frauds, and con artists were a few far-seeing alchemists who, through rigorous experimentation, transformed mysticism into science. Scientific historians generally credit the great 18th-century French chemist Antoine Lavoisier with modernizing chemistry. Exacting by nature, Lavoisier performed experiments that would provide lasting and verifiable proofs of various chemical theories. Another pioneer emerged almost 100 years later: Dimitri Mendeleev, an eccentric genius, sought to answer the most pressing questions that remained: Why did some elements have properties that resembled those of others? Were there certain natural groups of elements? And, if so, how many, and what elements fit into them? It was Mendeleev who finally constructed the first Periodic Table in the late 1800s. --From publisher description.