Uncle Tungsten

In the life of a pre-pubescent boy, whatever happened to the simple pleasures of sports, chasing girls to pull their pigtails, or playing cowboys and Indians?

UNCLE TUNGSTEN is the childhood memoir of Oliver Sacks, who, as the son of two physicians in 1930s and 40s London, adopts more cerebral interests. Actually, let's call them obsessions, e.g., Mendeleev's Table of the Elements:

"I copied it into my exercise book and carried it everywhere ... I spent hours now, enchanted, totally absorbed, wandering, making discoveries, in the enchanted garden of Mendeleev."

Oliver's propensity for intellectual pursuits was further encouraged by his two maternal uncles, Dave and Abe, two scientist/business entrepreneurs, the former nicknamed UNCLE TUNGSTEN for his preoccupation with that element and his process for manufacturing tungsten light bulbs.

This engaging and instructive volume is the author's narrative of his life from age 6 to 15, beginning in 1939 at the beginning of WWII, when he was protectively sent out of London to a boarding school. Returning in 1943, he set up his own household lab and began experimenting with a vengeance, his chief interest being metals and their properties. The text is leavened with descriptions of his home life, his parents and brothers, and summaries of the achievements of giants in the field of Chemistry: John Dalton, Robert Boyle, the Curies, Antoine Lavoisier, Dmitri Mendeleev, Ernest Rutherford, Michael Faraday, and others. UNCLE TUNGSTEN is a short, popular history of the science.

I'm not awarding 5 stars because obsessions, especially someone else's, can become tiresome. Even Oliver's parents, responsible as any for his scientific curiosity, could be driven to distraction. At one point on a family auto trip, the young Sacks blathers on about one of his favorite elements for twenty minutes in the back seat until his father shouts, "Enough about thallium!"

By the age of 15, Oliver's preoccupation with chemistry began to ebb as the hormones of adolescence began to flow. The boy, becoming a young man, discovers music and sex. Those then around him should thank the Almighty for puberty; he was becoming an insufferable eccentric. He grew up to be a neurologist.

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.

Dr. Sacks carefully weaves the history of his family and his own experiences growing up after World War II, with his fascination with the world around him and the history of chemistry. The product is one of the best science histories I have yet to read.

I wrestled with chemistry in high school. I finally gave up. If I had Dr. Sack's book, the outcome would have been different.

I must, in fairness, warn those who don't love chemistry, that they probably won't enjoy this book nearly as much as "An anthropologist on Mars" or "The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat". Those books dealt with more universally accessible events and behaviors: autism, Parkinson's, blindness and other neurological problems. Most readers will find them more interesting and compelling reading.

But if you do fit into the intended audience, this is one of the most fun books I've ever read about chemistry, and, as a chemistry teacher, I've read a lot of them. I learned a whole lot of new chemistry while reading it, and found my own love of the subject growing with each chapter. But as I read some of the negative reviews, I realized they do have a point. There is a lack of a narrative, his motivations are poorly explained, other people do seem to drop in and out without much followup. But for me, none of this mattered. This book was a pure joy to read.
Thank You, Dr. Sacks!

robert keil, moorpark college