Gold.
That is the word everybody hears when I say my software is called MAI-Alchemy. Lead in, gold out, a wizard in a pointy hat stirring a bubbling pot. It is a fun picture, and it is mostly wrong. Alchemy was never really about the gold. The gold was the excuse. The process was the point.
Alchemists were not casting spells. They worked with fire, glass and metal, and they wrote down what they did. Zosimos of Panopolis described distillation, sublimation and filtration. A woman called Maria the Jewess gave us the water bath, which is why your kitchen still has a bain-marie.[1] They distilled. They filtered. They sublimed. If you have ever run a sample prep, you have used an alchemist's toolbox. Even the word gives it away: chemistry is alchemy with the "al" knocked off.[2]
The best part is what happened when they failed. Around 1669, Hennig Brand went hunting for the philosopher's stone, the thing that was supposed to make gold. His raw material of choice was urine. He boiled it down and heated the residue in his furnace. He never found the stone. What came off instead glowed in the dark. It was phosphorus, a brand new element.[3] I can relate, minus the urine.
Isaac Newton didn't think alchemy was silly either. The man who gave us the laws of motion wrote more than a million words on it, and John Maynard Keynes called him "the last of the magicians."[4] I think Keynes had it backwards. Newton was chasing a question with the best tools he had, like every good scientist.
So did anyone ever make the gold? Yes, but not with fire. Chemistry only moves electrons. What makes gold gold is the nucleus: 79 protons, where lead has 82. Physicists have been making tiny amounts since 1941.[5] In the LHC's second run, from 2015 to 2018, the ALICE experiment at CERN estimated about 29 picograms, made when lead nuclei brushed past each other and threw off protons, each atom gone in an instant. CERN said the medieval dream had "technically come true."[6] Don't plan on making jewelry.
Here is where I come in. Recently I went on a journey that was apparently not possible, or at least too difficult to invest time in. It was the library for a LUMA detector. You know how much of a fan of VUV detectors I am. I even called it the philosopher's stone of the laboratory! So I was obsessed, just like the alchemists of old. I knew a library was possible.
Truth be known, I am not a spectroscopist. Spectroscopy always intimidated me; I will take GC any day! But I couldn't turn away, kind of like the scene when Jules and Vincent Vega opened the briefcase in Pulp Fiction. So I chased it, and I did it, and I learned the power of spectroscopy! I even named my software MAI-Alchemy: MAI for my company name, but pronounced "my." And so now you know why I call myself the Analytical Alchemist. That's much better than founder!
So why does alchemy matter?
Because alchemy was never just about turning lead into gold. It was about understanding the process and the methods needed to change matter. A chromatograph tells you how much. A spectrum tells you what. The library is how you get from one to the other. My proof of concept was the sulfur compounds in ASTM D5623, and each of the eight had a fingerprint of its own.[7] The alchemists kept their recipes secret, and some wrote them in code. In my library, an entry is only confirmed when a second, independent run agrees with the first.
For over three decades my job has been to solve problems by bringing different tools and techniques together until the answer comes out of the noise. Do that long enough and you start transmuting the techniques themselves, turning a method built for one problem into a new application for another. Not the gold. The process.
So the next time somebody rolls their eyes at the word alchemy, remember the water bath, the glowing phosphorus and Newton's million words. Now go find the thing you can't turn away from. How hard could it be?
References
1. L. M. Principe, "The Secrets of Alchemy", Distillations, Science History Institute, 30 January 2013. https://www.sciencehistory.org/stories/magazine/the-secrets-of-alchemy/
2. Merriam-Webster, "alchemy", etymology (Arabic al-kīmiyāʼ, via Medieval Latin; English "chemist" and "chemistry" descend from the same word). https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/alchemy
3. "Hennig Brand", Wikipedia (phosphorus discovered around 1669 while seeking the philosopher's stone, from boiled-down urine). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hennig_Brand
4. S. Kean, "Newton, the Last Magician", Humanities 32 (1), National Endowment for the Humanities, January/February 2011. https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2011/januaryfebruary/feature/newton-the-last-magician
5. R. Sherr, K. T. Bainbridge and H. H. Anderson, "Transmutation of Mercury by Fast Neutrons", Physical Review 60, 473-479 (1941). https://journals.aps.org/pr/issues/60/7
6. CERN, "ALICE detects the conversion of lead into gold at the LHC", 8 May 2025 (ALICE collaboration, Physical Review C). http://home.cern/alice-detects-conversion-lead-gold-lhc
7. ASTM D5623, Standard Test Method for Sulfur Compounds in Light Petroleum Liquids by Gas Chromatography and Sulfur Selective Detection (current edition D5623-24); scope and significance summary at https://store.astm.org/d5623-94r14.html. The method itself is not reproduced here.