"The Facts On File Chemistry Handbook features the following components: a glossary of more than 1,400 entries, many accompanied by labeled diagrams to help clarify the meanings. Topics covered include alkaline earth metals, bromides, carbides, element, fluorescence, Group V elements, helium, ion, litmus, and phototropy; biographies of more than 300 scientists from ancient times to the present whose discoveries have pushed forward the world's understanding and appreciation of chemistry.

Scientists discussed include Archimedes, George Wells Beadle, Marie Curie, Thomas Edison, Benjamin Franklin, Alfred Bernhard Nobel, Louis Pasteur, Frederick Sanger, and Karl Ziegler; a chronology that spans nearly 9,000 years in the history of discoveries in chemistry.

Events noted include the First Iron Age in Europe - when extraction and working of iron spread gradually across the continent (950-500 BCE); the standardization of weights and measures introduced by Charlemagne (789); English chemist Henry Cavendish's discovery of the element hydrogen (1766); and the French chemist Pierre Curie and French physicist Marie Curie's discovery of the elements radium and polonium (1898); tables, charts, and diagrams; and measurements, formulas, and calculations.".

"Supplemented by a helpful index, this book and the other volumes in The Facts On File Science Handbook series will enable students to compare information across subject areas, place each subject in context, and underline the close connections between all the sciences."--BOOK JACKET.