Italy-Primo Levi

Story

Hydrogen from Primo Levi’s collection The Periodic Table https://archive.org/download/ThePeriodicTable-PrimoLevi/periodic-primo.pdf

Themes

• Epiphany
  
• Curiosity, the Desire to Know, and Perseverance
  
• Rule Breaking
  
• “Other Worldliness”
  
• Metaphors: Describing an idea using vocabulary from another domain
• TRIZ (Teoriya Resheniya Izobretatelskhikh Zadatch))

Notes and References

1. The last story in The Periodic Table, titled Carbon is also a fantastic metaphoric journey of a single Carbon atom. Read it!! It has been described as the most accessible piece of science writing!

2. More Holocaust Reading:

   • Tadeuscz Borowski’s “Postal Indiscretions” is a series of letters written from a concentration camp.
     
   • His short story, This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen is also a harrowing read. Weblink to PDF
     
   • The World of Tadeuscz Borowski’s Auschwitz https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2021/09/12/the-world-of-tadeusz-borowskis-auschwitz/

3. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/apr/22/primo-levi-auschwitz-if-this-is-a-man-memoir-70-years

4. A Student Reflection on Primo Levi’s Hydrogen: https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/literature/21l-325-small-wonders-staying-alive-spring-2007/assignments/periodic2.pdf

5. Extract from “The key to the highest truths”: Primo Levi and the beauty of chemistry

Nonetheless, reading Levi’s writing over lockdown, I was reminded that he also witnessed chemistry’s most detestable side at Auschwitz, as part of the Chemical Kommando transporting magnesium chloride, and at the IG-Farben laboratory. Despite this, Levi never lost sight of the beauty of chemistry: for me, found in the sublimation of brilliant emerald-green crystals of nickelocene; in the jagged, imperfect trace of an action potential on the electromyograph; in the faint rainbow of lines emitted by potassium under a sodium discharge lamp. If Levi were to observe us in these practical classes, complete with our rash deductions, amateurish mistakes and shattered glassware, I like to think he would be pleased.

Song for the Story !!

Alastair(“Al”) Ian Stewart (born 5 September 1945) is a Scottish singer-songwriter and folk-rock musician who rose to prominence as part of the British folk revival in the 1960s and 1970s. He developed a unique style of combining folk-rock songs with delicately woven tales of characters and events from history.