History
Ancient Egyptians pioneered the art of synthetic "wet" chemistry up to 4,000 years ago.
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By 1000 BC ancient civilizations were using technologies that formed
the basis of the various branches of chemistry such as; extracting metal
from their ores, making pottery and glazes, fermenting beer and wine,
making pigments for cosmetics and painting, extracting chemicals from
plants for medicine and perfume, making cheese, dying cloth,
tanning leather,
rendering fat into soap, making glass, and making
alloys like bronze.
The genesis of chemistry can be traced to the widely observed phenomenon of
burning that led to
metallurgy—the art and science of processing ores to get metals (e.g.
metallurgy in ancient India).
The greed for gold led to the discovery of the process for its
purification, even though the underlying principles were not well
understood—it was thought to be a transformation rather than
purification. Many scholars in those days thought it reasonable to
believe that there exist means for transforming cheaper (base) metals
into gold. This gave way to alchemy and the search for the
Philosopher's Stone which was believed to bring about such a transformation by mere touch.
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