The Malleable Glass of the Ancients

Abstract

For centuries, alchemists tirelessly sought to create a transparent material that was at the same time flexible, i.e. the ‘malleable glass’ of ancient times. The intensive work of our forefathers in alchemy was in fact not in vain, because it led to the transmutation, not of base metals into gold, but rather of a secret, hermetic, cryptic and often obscure field of activity into modern chemistry and polymer science, with all its astonishing contemporary success