Can one be an alchemist today?
Although the alchemists of old sought to turn lead into gold, today’s alchemists search for new materials with properties as precious as gold’s. As one of these practitioners, Paul Canfield and his apprentices continue the search for the modern versions of the philosophers’ stone (or crystal). Bernd Matthias, a physicist who discovered thousands of superconducting compounds, was fond of pointing out that no theorist had ever predicted the existence of a new superconductor. Since theory provided no guidance in this area of physics, he preferred simply to explore the periodic table by means of the arc furnace. Matthias made something of a sport of baiting theorists, and they retaliated in kind. German physicists called his method schmutz physics, or dirty physics. Others called it alchemy, a reference to the body of ancient lore concerned with preparing a substance called the philosophers’ stone that would have the power of transmuting “base” metals, such as lead or iron, into “noble” me
