Primo Levi Nickel Chapter Summary

Primo Levi’s first job was at an asbestos mine in Turin, Italy in 1941. Levi was born Jewish and the degree he received on graduating his full time chemistry course from the University of Turin had written on it ‘Primo Levi, of the Jewish race.’ At a time when laws were being created that were specifically aimed at removing the writes of the Jewish race, it meant that finding a job was near impossible. Levi was offered his first job secretly under a new name with new papers. The “Quantitative analysis of rock samples” was Levi’s beginnings outside of university. Levi’s life is formed around the opportunities he gets to further his career. In the chapter of his book The Periodic Table, Nickel, Levi describes his first career path intermingled

with the new and very different lifestyle of the mine and the people he meets there. As he describes the process he discovered of enriching and separating Nickel from the raw material excavated by the mine, he also mentions his assistant Alida who doesn’t share his enthusiasm and “watched with an amused and sceptical expression.” Levi’s book shows how much chemistry meant to him through the dedication he put into his work. The Nickel chapter shows how Levi started to think outside the box to solve his chemical problems.
Levi’s Nickel chapter focuses mainly on nickel, asbestos and iron.

The mine produces large quantities of asbestos which is now known as quite a harmful chemical. At the time thought it was a very useful building material due to its attractive properties: “sound absorption, average tensile strength, its resistance to fire, heat, electrical and chemical damage, and affordability.” As well as this the mine produced iron and nickel, the chapters name sake. The start of World War II meant another industrial boom as opposing sides raced each other for the newest and best weaponry. Weaponry meant steel and steel meant nickel. The mine however only produced 0.2 percent nickel and that wasn’t enough to warrant extracting it. Levi’s problem to solve was whether the “raw material could be enriched.” He tried many different methods, “by magnetic separation, by floatation, by levigation, by sifting, with heavy liquids, with the shaking plate.” The only process however, that was mildly successful was by heating the material. Levi talks about the way the chemicals react and the effect that had on him as a

chemist.
Nickel is the key element in chapter 6, as the story spreads around Levi’s life at the mine there is always that underlying chemical thread that is the reason why he is at the mine.

The main nickel mines were located in New Caledonia and Canada, neither supplying Germany. Nickel is very important for the war effort and Italy at the time was allied with Germany and Hitler and consequently whatever the mine produces is used for the benefit of Germany. Levi, a Jew hiding his heritage because of Nazi Germany is key in the ability to gain nickel from the asbestos mine. He however is unaffected by the destination of the product he is trying to enrich saying, “I was not thinking that… the nickel produced would have entirely ended up in Fascist Italy’s and Hitler Germany’s armor.” This shows how dedicated Levi was to his work as a chemist outside the boundaries placed on him from his religion and circumstances. The idea that he could make an advancement in the refining process of nickel that had not been made before, was enough for him to discount the benefactors of such an advancement at that time. This reflects Levi’s life as he used chemistry as a way to survive Auschwitz and a way to keep him and his family going after the devastation of the concentration

camps.
Deductive reasoning is how chemists are able to find solutions to problems that other people can’t answer. In chapter 6 it was, in simple terms, how to get as much nickel from the asbestos mine as possible. The deductive approach meant that Levi was able to rule out all the known methods until he was left with the answer. It required thinking outside the box so that he was able to view the problem from a new perspective, in this case the decomposing point of asbestos. The small scale industrial chemistry is shown in the way Levi tests his hypothesis. Turning the raw material with a 0.2 percentage of nickel into something worth refining meant that Levi had to develop a process that was cost effective and efficient. This happened during 1941 in a small town, the equipment that is used today hadn’t been heard of and consequently what they did have was quite primitive. Even when Levi found a solution to his problem it was disregarded a “magnetic selector capable of separating a material” did not exist. The small scale of the industry set limitations on the chemists in what they could do and how it could be done especially 70 years ago when a lot of the modern day technology didn’t exist.