Elixir

In the 1830s in Paris, two scientists, Édouard Lòge and Auguste Laurent, set themselves an ambitious task – to unravel the mystery of what distinguishes living matter from inanimate matter. The scientific tradition of the time considered this impossible, so the young men were deemed mad marginals and expelled from the authoritative scientific community. During the day, they worked in a perfume shop, making oils and ingredients for perfumes, and in the evening, they embarked on their own chemical experiments. And one day their searches yielded a result, the explanation for which remains elusive to this day. In her book “Elixir,” historian Teresa Levitt tells two intricately intertwined stories – the development of the perfume industry in France and the emergence of organic chemistry. Together, they led chemists to one of the most astonishing scientific discoveries related to the mystery of the origin of life on Earth.