Recent accounts of the chemical history of the universe have tended to emphasize either the inorganic or the organic aspects of chemical evolution, looking, for example, at the nucleosynthesis of the chemical elements on the one hand, or the origin and development of living organisms on the other. This book takes chemistry as the central science of all materials - inorganic and organic - at the molecular level, and brings together both aspects in a clear account of the development of ideas of chemical evolution. This survey covers the generation of the light chemical elements in the Big Bang, their transformation into heavier elements in the stars, the origin of the solar system, and the molecular evolution of minerals and organisms on the earth. Spanning the range from nuclear chemistry and radioactivity, through mineral and organic chemistry, to biochemistry and molecular biology, it adopts a historical approach to show how recent research has modified and extended earlier conclusions and conjectures.