This is a great science book! I kid you not, it is a book you don’t want to put down, it’s just that fascinating. Chapman writes a fascinating history of chemistry. I kept wanting to know, what happened next? I am by no means a chemistry expert or anything like that, and as a lay person this was an easy to follow book. Chapman layers the information so by the later portions of the book you can understand what is being said without being overwhelmed by the terms.

The book contains humor and little bits that make the stories and people fascinating. You learn about more than just how the superheavy element discovery takes place, but who made that possible, and how. And there is drama in the book. There are only a few labs around the world hunting for new elements, and when they created just a few atoms, it becomes difficult to say with certainty that yes this is a new element. So competing labs have competing claims, and naming rights. This was a captivating read!

In Superheavy, Kit Chapman goes on a scientific, chronological, and geographical tour of the mysterious upper reaches of the Periodic Table, taking his readers back in time to the beginning of nuclear physics/chemistry as well as from the United States to Russia to Germany and Japan and introducing his audience to the scientists who discovered (or not—there were more than few disputes) the “trans-uranium” elements beyond uranium’s atomic number 92. It’s both an engaging and informative read.

After covering the early discoveries necessary for further exploration of superheavy elements (fission, fusion, the makeup of the atom, etc.), Chapman moves into the increasingly difficult job of discovering, or creating, the upper elements. Most of the early heavy lifting was done by the lab in Berkeley, which had formed the perfect mix of high level equipment and high quality scientists and engineers, led by Nobel winner Glen Seaborg, who was involved in discovering ten new elements and was the first living scientist (and one of only two) honored by having an element name after him.

Those early elements were relatively easy to find — samples were large (in chemical terms), they stuck around for minutes, and detectors didn’t have to be all that sensitive. But as the explorers moved farther upward, all that changed. New technology had to be devised, samples were microscopic (to the nano degree) and they stuck around for seconds and then far, far less than a second. After Berkeley’s early success, other teams began to get into the game and even take the lead, particularly the Russians led for many years by a Yuri Oganessian, the second person to have an element named after them. Teams in Sweden, Germany, and Japan also leapt into the race, and Chapman does a great job through interviews and research of conveying the competition, sometimes heated, sometimes petty, often tied to geopolitics (the Cold War) between the teams as he covers the push forward, innovations, embarrassments over mistaken claims, disputes over who was first (and the accompanying naming rights), and even outright fraud (once).

The interviews in particular are engaging, as are the many personal stories, such as the time one pair of scientists, raising the half-life clock on a sample, zoomed past a gate guard threatening to shoot if they didn’t stop. There are also several surprisingly moving moments, as Chapman never loses track of the personal in pursuit of the science. He also does an excellent job of highlighting the contributions of female scientists such as Lise Meitner or Darleane Hoffman or who have too often been overlooked —passed over for a deserved Nobel Prize or, thanks to sexism, missing out on been credited for several element discoveries.

Superheavy is always informative, often entertaining, sometimes moving, and, as scientists edge nearer to discovering elements that due to their incredibly short existence serve no “useful” purpose, filled with the kind of wonder for wonder’s sake that is the best of science.

Superheavy is easily in contention for my book of the year. Chapman has written a book that is informative, interesting, accessible, funny, horrifying, and deeply human. And I’m talking about a book about nuclear chemistry! I just cannot find enough superlatives to shower on Superheavy.

I’m not a chemist (though I enjoyed it and was good at it in high school). I’m not a physicist. I was never good at physics. I’m not a historian, either for science or politics. None of that matters because this book was written for everyone. All the complex science and equations are distilled into easy to understand concepts that allow anyone to understand the basics of what is happening in the labs and how we determine if a new element has been discovered. And when I say easy to understand, I mean just that. I’m the science-y one in my family and when I was describing the book to my husband, he kept asking questions and every single time (thanks to this book) I was able to say “Well, actually, I can tell you exactly how that works/happens.” and he understood..

From the very beginning Chapman grabs your attention and then holds it with anecdotes that inspire, that make you laugh, that make you want to cry or rail angrily, or simply gasp in horror right along with these people who were there. I absolutely loved the stories that made me feel like I was right there, watching it happen.
It’s an exploration of the science of the transuranic elements. It’s also mini biographies of many of the key players and discoverers. It’s a history lesson about the Cold War and how politics spilled out into the scientific community. It’s a look forward into the future of element discovery.

Scenes that had a profound effect on me: Fermi racing down a hallway and then him and his wife buying the most expensive watches they could in their barely in time flight from Italy. Playing with plutonium, because. A discussion about naming elements after the planets. A board with notations and equations protected from the elements. A stroke far from help. A futile fury at being left out of two element discoveries because women can’t be chemists. A fundamental betrayal with a discovery hoax. A loss too profound for words when the parts of a particle accelerator are dumped into the Pacific. A momentary slip of a knife and a flash of blue. A Pacific atoll here one moment and gone the next in a mushroom cloud. The naming of Element 118.

Science is advancing our understanding of the world we live in and its rules. The people and places who help us better understand deserve to be celebrated and celebrate them is what Chapman does. I would recommend this book to everyone. It’s so incredibly well-written and so informative about the chemistry and the history and the politics and the people – most especially the people.

I LOVE this type of science writing! It shows how the periodic table, chemistry, and atomic science are interesting, written in an easily-understood way. My older students would enjoy this book, too, especially the ones who love science and/or history. I think that even someone who is not normally interested in reading about science could be drawn into liking it by this book.

Go ahead and juke that feeling that this is too heady of a topic to keep up with--Chapman has created a impressively-paced, expertly-laid recount of how we began to explore our world to find new elements, many that only the world's most sensitive instruments can detect. We breeze through the meek beginnings of the field into the atomic age, which leads into the Cold War era, and finishing up as recently as a few months back.

It's a global competition to discover what's next on the periodic table, and so our author hops between these places of interest, interviewing the still-living contributors and relaying tales of how watershed moments unfolded (and, on numerous occasions, gives us different perspectives of the same event). It brings the chase into unknown elemental territory to a remarkably entertaining level, bestowing this part of scientific history with the excitement and weight it deserves. Successes and faults are attributed without bias (Chapman appearing to take a "just the facts, man" approach), and certain emphasis is laid upon (with a big hat put upon this idea in the latter chapters) how scientists across the world need to work together to move forward, instead of letting politics become a stumbling block.

I really don't have any complaints here. It's informative, easy to understand and read given the subject matter, and warrants future revisiting. A top-10 book of the year so far for me, of that I'm sure.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Bloomsbury USA/Bloomsbury Sigma for the advance read.

A delightful narrative tale of chemistry and atomic physics. This is like reading a great science podcast, or having a history of science class with a professor who is a masterful storyteller.

Chapman brings a wonderful view of the Atomic Age, where it came from and where it’s going today. Well worth reading for anyone who loves science, history, or general knowledge.

This is the way science books should be written. A great mix of science, history, personal stories, and interesting facts. You'll learn quite a bit along the way. It also includes some future-casting as well. Recommended.

I really appreciate the ARC for review!!

This is how great science writing is done

I loved this book. It has everything I want in a great science book: clearly-explained science, great historical perspective, a lot of biographical information on the scientists, and a good sense of humor. Even the footnotes were great. I also liked how Kit Chapman reveals his own journey in writing the book, including his first-person descriptions of the places he visited and the people he spoke to. In this, the book is as good as Rebecca Skloot’s “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” and Brenna Hassett’s “Built on Bones”. Kit CHapman’s book is a must-read for anyone interested in science.

Superheavy is the kind of nonfiction that takes an incredibly complex scientific field and breaks it down into an easy-to-understand set of narratives that are surprisingly entertaining. By the end of the book, you’ll know more about atoms and elements than you ever thought possible.

This book’s description sounded fascinating to me. I have trouble imagining how someone could invent anything out of thin air, much less an element that could change the course of human history. We get a first-hand look at the complexities of elemental creation, revealing the many scientists who worked tirelessly to expand mankind’s scientific understanding. There’s a real sense of excitement that permeates the book, showing the author’s fascination alongside the unbridled joy of these pioneers who discovered something new. At its heart, Superheavy is a history of the periodic table and its many elements. The author does a great job translating this complicated science for those of us who don’t spend much time with chemistry.

It’s easy to imagine concepts like the periodic table have always been known but, like all things, someone had to discover it first. This is the story of those discoveries and the ripple effect they had on the scientific community and the world at large. It’s compelling and extremely readable, and I left the book with a reverence for the kind of mind that can make such a monumental scientific discovery.

Review to be published on August 27: https://reviewsandrobots.com/2019/08/27/superheavy-book-review

Superheavy is an interesting and engaging review of how the periodic table was populated with the synthetic elements. Chapman writes in a conversational prose that is easy to follow and captures the personality of the scientists involved. He clearly explains the processed involved in creating new elements, and gives credit to both the chemists and physicists involved. All too often, the realm of nuclear reactors is thought to be the exclusive province of theoretical physicists, but Chapman shows how different skills were necessary to create and characterize the heavy elements. The book captures the successes, failures, lucky guesses and mistakes (because science involves all of these) and provides a book that should stand next to the perennial classic, Richard Rhodes' The Making of the Atomic Bomb. This is a must read for all scholars of scientific history as well as students eager to understand more about the nature of the periodic table.