ACS NEWS
CHF DEBUTS RARE BOOK COLLECTION Library of 6,000 chemical, alchemical, and medicinal works spans six centuries AALOK MEHTA, C&EN WASHINGTON
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HE CHEMICAL HERITAGE FOUN-
dation (CHF) has purchased— for $10 million—the Roy G. Neville Historical Chemical Li brary, a collection of roughly 6,000 rare volumes spanning six centuries of science and covering topics such as min ing, metallurgy, physics, chemistry alche my, botany, and medicine. C H F debuted the collection on April 19 with a public display, reception, and keynote address by Lawrence M. Principe, a professor of chemistry and of the histoFROM
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"CHF now holds one of the most im portant collections of the early history of chemistry in the world," he said. "Speak ing as a historian of science, I know that if I were to try to locate another repository with this volume, this depth, and this breadth of material elsewhere, I would be limited to a very few sites indeed—those sites, in fact, would be the caliber of na tional libraries of major nations." The earliest work in the collection—a Latin Bible—dates from 1478, shortly af
