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Ele Willoughby, PhD

I’m excited to join - the element themes are a great fit for science stories I want to tell. But I have no time to carve now, so until I can catch up, here’s a the earliest recorded for “gold”: Mary the Jewess (aka Maria Hebraea, Miriam, or Maria Prophetissa). She likely lived in 1st century Alexandria. Zosimos of Panopolis (~300 CE) relates that she wrote a treatise called 🧵1/n

My linocut portrait ‘Mary the Jewess, Mother of Alchemy’ with 3 devices attributed to her: the bain-marie (essentially a double boiler, shown as a large round brick furnace complete with orange flames, water bath and vessels), the kerotakis (which allowed one to heat items while collecting vapors, shown as a diagram with tube, with orange flames, below a heated substance, grill and a dome on top) and the tribikos (a kind of alembic with three arms that was used to obtain substances purified by distillation, here like a smaller bain-marie complete with orange flames in furnace, heated vessel and 3 arms to 3 alembics). Mary herself is printed in a gradient of purple to bronze to purple (top to bottom) on ivory paper. She is a Hellenistic Jew, dressed in a draped Classical style dress and wears a veil over her long hair. Her clothing was the frescos of the Dura-Europos synagogue built in Syria in 244 CE.
#womenInSTEM#printmaking#reliefPrint
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Ele Willoughby, PhD

“On Furnaces and Apparatuses” & she invented, or at least described ovens, apparatuses for cooking & distilling, & other alchemical experimentation, made of metal, clay, & glass with joints sealed using fat, wax, starch paste, & fatty clay. Amongst inventions attributed to her are the bain-marie (named in her honour, essentially a double boiler), the kerotakis (which allowed one to heat items while collecting vapors) & the tribikos (a kind of alembic with three arms that was used to obtain 🧵2/n

Ele Willoughby, PhD

substances purified by distillation, still used in chemistry labs). I’ve included these 3 devices in my portrait. Her book contains the 1st description of a still. She appears in the writings of other alchemists in the Greek tradition like Christianos (7th century) & in the writings of early Arab authors.

Sadly we know very little about Mary’s life, but her books are quoted by others. Like other alchemists, her words about her explorations of substances are quite mystical & hard to understand.🧵

Ele Willoughby, PhD

Alchemists disguised their works to avoid accusations of witchcraft or sorcery or to keep their research findings secret from most people. She spoke of joining metals of different sexes, or the death of metals - things which do not fit with our modern scientific knowledge. Some people credit her with discovering hydrochloric acid. She is credited with inventing the silver sulfide process, still used in metalworking today. She is believed to have discovered caput mortum, a dark purple dye. 🧵4/5

Ele Willoughby, PhD

Though alchemists’ understanding of materials was not scientific, the methodologies & apparatus developed definitely involved scientific thinking & form the foundation of what was to become .

minouette.etsy.com/listing/156

🧵 5/5

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