Drew Professor of the Humanities, Johns Hopkins University Dr. Principe's research focuses on the late Medieval and early modern periods, with special attention to the history of alchemy and chemistry. His current projects involve developments in chemistry at the Parisian Académie Royale des Sciences, 1666-1730, especially in the work of Wilhelm Homberg. He is the author of The Aspiring Adept: Robert Boyle and His Alchemical Quest, co-author of Alchemy Tried in the Fire: Starkey, Boyle, and the Fate of Helmontian Chymistry (winner of the 2005 Pfizer Prize), and editor of Chymists and Chymistry: Studies in the History of Alchemy and Early Modern Chemistry. He is also active in studying the historical interactions of science and religion. Dr. Principe is especially interested in how theological interests drove scientific exploration and innovation, and how such interests were manifested in scientific systems. He earned undergraduate degrees at the University of Delaware, and did his graduate work at Indiana University and at Johns Hopkins. He is the first recipient of the Francis Bacon Medal for significant contributions to the history of science. Alchemy is often considered something irrational or foolish, as a greedy quest for gold, or simply unscientific. Recent research has, however, overturned this prejudice and is showing how alchemy was a key contributor to the history of science and to the practical and theoretical foundations of chemistry. This lecture will present some of this new material to demonstrate how the alchemists’ goals were undergirded by theory, how many of them were keen observers and experimentalists who integrated theory and practice, and how several heroes of the Scientific Revolution, such as Robert Boyle, avidly pursued the Philosophers’ Stone and believed they were close to, or had achieved, the transmutation of metals. Finally, some of the most extravagant and seemingly incomprehensible imagery of alchemy will be shown to conceal actual chemical practices which can not only be decoded, but replicated in the laboratory today--often with very surprising results.