Book Reading Update: Fontana History of Chemistry Chapter 12

This chapter is titled "The Chemical News" as it describes the development and proliferation of two vehicles by which chemists communicated with each other and disseminated information: publications and societies.  The rapid expansion of chemistry after the 1840's is further highlighted by the proliferation of periodicals and societies. Liebig's statement in 1834 underscores the importance of these periodicals to chemists:  “Chemical literature is not to be found in books; it is contained in journals.  In books, the individual author’s opinion dominates and his judgment is without appeal.  However, in journals there is defence, there is justification, and because of the necessity of a mutual neutralization of opinions, we approach the common goal of science.”

Until the 1840’s, both British and Continental chemical news was published in general commercial journals, with commercial trade journals being distinct from journals published by societies. Many of these commercial journals, however, were “extremely quarrelsome organs and served more as factional weapons of propaganda than as journals containing serious chemical, medical, and pharmaceutical information.  They make entertaining reading and are important sources for the social historian of science…”  For serious historians of the development of chemistry as an academic and practical subject, the author recommends Taylor’s Philosophical Magazine and the Chemical Gazette.

The first national Chemical Society in Britain independent from the Royal Society of Science was formed in 1841.  The author offers several reasons for why it took longer than other national science societies:  many of the societies formed were specialized and there was no collaborative chemical projects to bring together the small interest groups and different classes of practitioners and philosophers existed and practitioners were further divided into different fields of interest.  [A brief outline of the development and branching of the chemical profession: Chemistry back then was divided into the pure and the applied.  The industrial revolution further reinforced the dichotomy between chemical philosophers interested in the nature of chemical phenomena and chemical practitioners.  Chemical practitioners were further divided into chemists and druggists and industrial chemists.Apothecaries became medical practitioners of pharmacy as distinguished from those who were involved with the commerce of drugs and chemicals.Chemical practitioners also have established professions in the field of analysis for other types of chemical industries such as dye making, alkali production, etc.  Chemistry teaching also became an established chemical profession for both practical and philosophical chemists as the medical education made chemical education a requirement and scientific and nonscientific societies availed of lectures in chemistry.  Chemists also became expert witnesses in court litigations and patent cases and advisors to governments and industries in matters requiring chemical knowledge such as water sanitation.]  In May 1841, the Chemical Society of London was founded and became a model for other chemical societies, its founding driven by collaborative philosophers and practitioners of chemistry of all classes and professions open to ideas coming from the continent.  The need for a qualifying organization to certify competent analysts drove the formation of the Institute of Chemistry, a splinter group to remove the qualifying process from member selection that can be manipulated and corrupted.  At this time there was an increasing need for competent analysts due to demands of quality control in industries like alkali manufacturing and gasoil production and as advisors to local municipal governments to enforce and industries to comply with new public health regulations on water sanitation, air pollution, etc.  Nevertheless, specialized societies begun to crop up again to protect their own interests: technologists, dyers and colorists, electrochemists, etc.  Even with the amalgamation n the 1970’s of the many specialized organizations for economy of scale, the “peculiar” British class system of no mixing between managers and workers kept the Royal Society of Chemistry separate from the Society of Chemical Industry.

The Chemical Periodical:  In April 1778, Lorenz Crell founded the first ever chemical periodical, Chemisches Journal in the “home of specialized journals”, Germany.  The financial and wide-distribution success of this journal was attributed by the author to "its formula of providing fresh chemical intelligence to middle-class doctors, apothecaries, and chemical manufacturers who had little access to the proceedings of learned societies and academies".  It ceased publication in 1804 due to its endorsement of phlogiston chemistry.  In 1789, Annales de chimie (‘the voice of Lavoisier chemistry’) was founded by Lavoisier, de Morveau, Berthollet, and Fourcroy.  This periodical followed the German periodical tradition of providing translation of German and English papers.  In 1790, in Italy, Annali di Chimica was edited by Ludovico Brugnatelli.  In many cases, national societies published journals in their own language and "gave chemical communications a far more insular, even nationalistic, appearance than they had had in earlier more urbane and transnational commercial periodicals.”  By 1900, Germany had become the world leader in publishing important chemical periodicals catering to a prolific group of chemists including Americans.  In addition, the German Chemical Society was also responsible for updating Beilstein, a multi-volume compendium of organic compounds.  “Neither Britain, France, nor America matched the variety of German literature until after the First World War…”

The founding of the American Chemical Society:  In 1874, H. Carrington Bolton of the Columbia School of Mines suggested the gathering of chemists at Priestley’s home to celebrate the 100th anniversary of his isolation of dephlogisticated air (oxygen).  In this gathering, Charles Chandler proposed the formation of a national chemical society, independent of the chemical section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.  It was voted down but Chandler proceeded to form the New York Chemical Society in 1876.  He shortly after that declared it should be an American Chemical Society with John Draper as its first president.  Not everyone agreed and some local societies were formed in response to the perceived hegemony of east coast chemists.  The biggest step to solidarity came in 1893 when the Journal of the American Chemical Society moved its publication from New York to Philadelphia.  By 1908, ACS had some 3400 members, more than the German Chemical Society.

A section tribute to William Crookes, Chemical Editor of Chemical News:  Crookes was described by the author as a “scientist of considerable originality and a journalist with sound commercial sense”.  “Crookes brilliantly overcame the difficulty of catering at once for the purely scientific reader, the practical chemist, and a still larger class of reader who, with but imperfect knowledge of science , [sought] only for information which may be turned to account commercially”.  Chemical News was an independent commercial chemical journal that ran weekly almost 70 years “of continuous service to the chemical community”.