The forgotten father of chemistry?
New evidence reveals how a 16th century Italian physician shaped modern science
In the mid-16th century, science began a long transition away from the teaching of Aristotle, who believed that everything was a combination of matter and ‘form’, and into the modern idea of structure. Led by the likes of Rene Descartes, Isaac Newton and Galileo Galilei, science moved through a kaleidoscope of interpretations to a corpuscular approach to matter – that everything is composed of small particles (corpuscles). Or so we thought.