Common wisdom says that medieval alchemists were kooky pseudo-scientists who wasted their time trying to turn base metals into gold. But now it seems that alchemists were not all charlatans or hopeless dreamers. Over the last century, scientists have demonstrated that turning base elements into gold really is possible, and that alchemists could have done it too if they had possessed nuclear reactors. And there are other modern people who call themselves alchemists too, as we recently discovered.