The 13th Element: The Sordid Tale of Murder, Fire and Phosphorus

In this well-researched and very readable book, Mr.Emsley describes the initial discovery of elemental phosphorus by alchemists with an initial production of ounces per year from urine! at an exorbitant cost, to WWII production of thousands of tons per month.Of course, it was immediately put to use as a medicine - something that powerful MUST be good for what ails you... fortunately only the rich could afford to be poisoned that way!The perils of working with raw phosphorus (eg, while making lucifers) gradually became obvious and are graphically described, as well as some horrific accidents while transporting the stuff. Products such as pesticides, incendiaries, smoke screens and nerve gas show its aggressive uses, while other chapters show the benefits of fertilizers, preservatives and detergents.On a side-track, phosphorus's involvement in spontaneous human combustion is investigated - also explaining will o'wisps and graveyard apparitions.Immensely readable and crammed full of facts and figures, I recommend this as a welcome addition to any amateur science historian's library. *****

This book was first published last year in England under the title 'The Shocking History of Phosphorus'. However, its US publishers decided to call it 'The 13th element' because it was the 13th element to be discovered, and I mention this in the book. I am aware that the atomic number of phosphorus is 15 - indeed I wrote a text book devoted entirely to phosphorus chemistry more than 20 years ago - and I am sorry if this has caused some readers to think that I have got my chemistry wrong.

There are countless processes and materials that cycle through to keep life cycles on Earth going. Is there one material that is the bottleneck, the thing that limits populations and growth? Surprisingly, there is a "supreme ruler" that if diminished slows all life down, no matter what the availability of other chemicals is. That bottleneck chemical is phosphorus. According to _The Thirteenth Element: The Sordid Tale of Murder, Fire, and Phosphorus_ (John Wiley & Sons) by John Emsley, phosphorus is essential for, among other things, being the backbone of DNA and forming the basic chemistry for biological storage and use of energy. It does not get replenished by circulation as the other big four do; carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen all can circulate in the atmosphere or by water. It cannot be "fixed" from the atmosphere into the soil by microbes, as nitrogen can. Phosphorus does have its cycles, but they are slow, like the one that includes it being washed from the soil into the sea, forming part of the sea bed, and then in millions of years being lifted up as rock to form new land. The main land-based cycle is simply from soil to plants to animals and via urine, feces, or decomposition, back to soil again. Cultivation of land means that phosphorus in plants is exported away, and does not get re-deposited into the soil. Crops grown on the same land deplete it of other vital chemicals, but the one that is lost forever without deliberate replacement is phosphorus; this was not known until the nineteenth century. It was found that using bone meal as a fertilizer was effective, but it was originally assumed that the calcium in its calcium phosphate was the cause.Emsley has good fun describing the ins and outs of phosphorus, but his book is particularly wide-ranging. He explains why the phosphorus in detergents is not really as bad as we once thought. He explains that it has been used as a medicine for centuries, even though it never cured anyone of anything. He tells stories of phosphorus as a poison, used as such successfully by many dissatisfied husbands and wives, some of whom were particularly skillful at the use of the element in this way, having practiced on a succession of spouses. Much of the book is devoted to the nasty properties of phosphorus, such as the horrid disease of "phossy jaw" which afflicted those in the matchmaking trade, or the distressing effects of nerve gas or phosphorous bombs. So, like so many things, phosphorus is neither good nor bad, but is essential and can be used in many admirable or detestable ways. Emsley takes us through many of them in a wide-ranging book that not only covers the science of his element, but also the social forces in such activities as the advertising of matches and the social reforms which improved the safety of the matchmakers. He has many previous credits as a science writer, and clearly and vividly describes the history and both the dramatic and quotidian effects of an

I'm the US editor for this book, and I wanted to answer the questions below. It was brought to our attention late in the game (by Oliver Sacks, no less) that zinc (I believe) was known in Asia before phosphorus was known in Europe, making the latter the 14th element discovered on a world-scale. However, because the book has a European focus, and there phosphorus was #13, we decided to keep the title as it was. Naturally, I'm rating this book with 5 stars not just because I want to sell lots of copies but because we wouldn't have acquired it otherwise. It is great fun, especially the material on spontaneous human combustion.

Regardless of genre, this book has it all. I really enjoy good science writing - the works of Stephen Jay Gould come first to mind - but lament that these books are all too rare. The 13th Element was one of those seredipitous happenstances wherin one stubles upon a true gem where one had not expected to find even a rhinestone. Subtitled "The Sordid Tale of Murder, Fire and Phosphorus", this book had everything one might want from either a thriller, a good spy tale, horror fiction or true crime. Whether it is the twisted story of how alchemists boiled down gallons of urine in order to obtain tiny amounts of a strange, glowing element, the gruesome tale of matchmakers and "fossey-jaw" (an unpleasant rotting and eventual disintegration of the facial bones), typically British tales of amateur poisoners, or a brief history of poison gas in warfare, the true stories behind the 13th element, phosphorus, are all riveting. Sure, some of this material was a tad more scientifically in depth than I really cared about, but most of that is thoughtfully saved for the last chapter or two. From page one on I was delighted with how this book propelled forward with the inertia of that giant stone chasing Indiana Jones. Look, don't pass this one by. I'm immediately ordering a copy of Emsley's other book, Molecules at an Exhibition. This is a man who clearly knows how to popularize science by recognising a great story when he sees one and writing it without dumbing-down or condescending to his readers. This is the best kind of science writing: thrilling.