'But what is a chemical engineer?': Profiling the membership of the british institution of chemical engineers, 1922-1956

Minerva

Volumn 38, Issue 2, 2000, Pages 147-170

  Mackie, Robin ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 37849189375     PISSN: 00264695     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/a:1026596910667     Document Type: Article

References (90)

1. Sir Harold Hartley, 'Chemical Engineering - the Way Ahead', Transactions of the Institution of Chemical Engineers, 33, (1955), 20-26, esp, 26;
2. C. E. Spearing, The Evolution of Chemical Engineering', Transactions of the Institution of Chemical Engineers, 40, . (1962), 195-202, esp. 195.
3. Sir Hugh Beaver, 'Chemical Engineering: A Progress Report', Transactions of the Institution of Chemical Engineers, 37, (1959), 214-220;
4. Spearing,Sir Hugh Beaver, ' Transactions of the Institution of Chemical Engineers, ibid., 202.
5. E. S. Sellers, The Chemical Engineer as a Professional Man', Transactions of the Institution of Chemical Engineers, 43 (1965), 187-191.
6. R. A. Buchanan, 'Institutional Proliferation in the British Engineering Profession, 1847-1914', Economic History Review, 2nd series, XXXVIII (1985), 42-60;
7. R. A. Buchanan, The Engineers. A History of the Engineering Profession in Britain, 1750-1914 (London: Jessica Kingsley, 1989).
8. Buchanan, 'Institutional Proliferation', The Engineers. A History of the Engineering Profession in Britain, 1750-1914 ibid., 57.
9. Buchanan, 'The Engineers. A History of the Engineering Profession in Britain, 1750-1914 Ibid., 59.
10. Buchanan, The Engineers, op. cit. note 4, 202-203.
11. For comparative figures on the membership of the different engineering institutions, see Buchanan, The Engineers, op. cit. note 4, 233.
12. See, for instance, Don Freshwater, Peoples, Pipes and Processes. A Short History of Chemical Engineering and the Institution of Chemical Engineers (Rugby: IChemE, 1997);
13. John Basil Brennan, The First Fifty Years. A History of the Institution of Chemical Engineers, 1922-1972', unpublished manuscript in the possession of the IChemE.
14. J. F. Donnelly, 'Chemical Engineering in England, 1880-1922', Annals of Science, 45 (1988), 555-590.
15. ' Roy MacLeod, 'The Chemists Go to War: The Mobilization of Civilian Chemists and the British War Effort, 1914-1918', Annals of Science, 50 (1993), 455-481;
16. Colin Divall, James F. Donnelly and Sean F. Johnston, 'Professional Identity and Organisation in a Technical Occupation: The Emergence of Chemical Engineering in Britain, c.19151930', Contemporary British History, 13 (1999), 56-81.
17. Divall, Donnelly and Johnston, 'Professional Identity and Organisation in a Technical Occupation', op. cit. note 11, 62.
18. Klaus Buchholz, 'Verfahrenstechnik (Chemical Engineering) - Its Development, Present State and Structure', Social Studies of Science, 9 (1979), 33-62.
19. The paper draws on the 'Chemists Database' compiled as part of the research project 'Studies in the British Chemical Community: the Principal Institutions, 1881-1972', based at the Open University and led by Dr Gerrylynn K. Roberts. It has received substantial funding from the Leverhulme Trust. The 'Chemists Database' includes biographical data on all council members and representative samples of the ordinary members of the four -. major British organizations of chemists in this period: the Chemical Society, the Institute (later Royal) of Chemistry, the Society of Chemical Industry and the Institution of Chemical Engineers.
20. The focus of this paper is on the development of a body of practitioners rather than on discipline formation. For a useful discussion of how disciplines emerge which highlights the role of social factors in the process, see 'Introduction: Problems in the Emergence of New Disciplines', Gérard Lemaine, Roy MacLeod, Michael Mulkay and Peter Weingart (eds.), Perspectives on the Emergence of Scientific Disciplines (The Hague: Mouton, 1976), 1-23.
21. For Britain, see A. M. Carr-Saunders and P. A. Wilson, The Professions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1933);
22. Geoffrey Millerson, The Qualifying Associations (London: Routledge, 1964).
23. Eliot Freidson, Professionalism Reborn. Theory, Prophecy and Policy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994), 16-27.
24. J. B. Morrell, 'Professionalisation', in R. C. Olby et al. (eds.), Companion to the History of Modem Science (London: Routledge, 1990), 980-989, esp., 980.
25. Rolf Torstendahl, for instance, talks of 'knowledge-based groups ...which may develop professionalism' by applying strategies such as closure, Rolf Torstendahl, 'Essential Properties, Strategic Aims and Historical Development: Three Approaches to Theories of Professionalism', in Michael Burrage and Rolf Torstendahl (eds.), Professions in Theory and History. Rethinking the Study of Professions (London: Sage Publications, 1990), 4461;
26. idem., 'Introduction: Promotion and Strategies of Knowledge-Based Groups', in Rolf Torstendahl and Michael Burrage (eds.), The Formation of Professions (London: Sage Publications, 1990), 1-10. Freidson uses 'the word profession to refer to an occupation that controls its own work, organized by a special set of institutions sustained in part by a particular ideology of expertise and service', Friedson, op. cit. note 17, 10.
27. Torstendahl, 'Essential Properties, Strategic Aims and Historical Development', op. cil. note 19, 45; see also, Thomas Brante, 'Professional Types as a Strategy of Analysis', in Burrage and Torstendahl, The Formation of Professions ibid., 75-93.
28. Michael Burrage, Konrad Jarausch and Hannes Siegrist, 'An Actor-Based Framework for the Study of the Professions', in Burrage and Torstendahl, The Formation of Professions ibid., 203-225.
29. Andrew Abbott, The System of Professions. An Essay in the Division of Expert Labour (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), esp. 59-85.
30. Burrage, Jarausch and Siegrist, op. cit. note 21, 204.
31. Colin Divall and Sean Johnston, 'Scaling-Up: the Evolution of Intellectual Apparatus Associated with the Manufacture of Heavy Chemicals in Britain, 1900-1939', in A. S. Travis, H. G. Schröter and Ernst Homburg (eds.), Determinants in the Evolution of the European Chemical Industry, 1900-1939: New Technologies, Political Frameworks, Markets and Companies (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998), 199-214;
32. Divall, Donnelly and Johnston, 'Professional Identity and Organisation in a Technical Occupation', op. cit. note 11, 56-81.
33. Buchanan, The Engineers, op. cit. note 4, 69-124.
34. Divall, Donnelly and Johnston, op. cit. note 11, 60;
35. Terry S. Reynolds, 'Defining Professional Boundaries: Chemical Engineering in the Early 20th Century', Technology and Culture, 27 (1986), 694-716.
36. For parallels between nineteenth-century British professional associations, see W. J. Reader, Professional Men. The Rise of the Professional Classes in Nineteenth-Century England (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1966), esp. 163-166;
37. for the extent to which later British engineering institutions modelled themselves on earlier ones, see Buchanan, The Engineers, op. cit. note 4, 90-91, 121.
38. For the origins of the Institute of Chemistry, see Colin A. Russell, Noel G. Coley, and Gerrylynn K. Roberts, Chemists by Profession. The Origins and Rise of the Royal Institute of Chemistry (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1977), esp. chs. 7 and 8;
39. for the IChemE, see Divall, Donnelly and Johnston, op. cit. note 11.1 have also profited from discussions with Dr. Colin Divall and Dr. Sean Johnston about material in their forthcoming . book on the Institution of Chemical Engineers.
40. For a list of institutions teaching chemistry in 1877 compiled by William Crookes, see Chemical News, 36 (1877), 123-132.
41. Russell, Coley and Roberts, op. cit. note 28;
42. R. F. Bud and G. K. Roberts, Science vs. Practice. Chemistry in Victorian Britain (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984), 158-163.
43. Donnelly, op. cit. note 10, 568-575.
44. Charles Carpenter, 'Presidential Address', Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry, 35 (1916), 1185-1191.
45. The Chemist and the Engineer', Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry, 35 (1916), 1239-1240, esp. 1239.
46. E. F. Armstrong, 'Address by the President', Chemistry and Industry, 42 (1923), 603612, esp. 607.
47. Bud and Roberts, op. cit. note 30, esp. 141-163;
48. Ronald Kline, 'Constructing 'Technology or Applied Science. Public Rhetoric of Scientists and Engineers in the United States, 1880-1945', Isis, 86 (1995), 194-221.
49. Quoted in 'Opening of the Sir John Cass Institute, Aldgate', Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry, 21 (1902), 287.
50. H. H. Gray, 'The Chemist and Industry', Chemistry and Industry, 42 (1923), 956-958, esp. 957.
51. See Bud and Roberts, op. cit. note 30, 118-147.
52. Reynolds, op. cit. note 26,710.
53. In doing so, they were, of course, working within accepted ideas of the relationship between science and practice. However, as Lemaine, MacLeod, Mulkay and Weingart emphasize, the delineation of new disciplines was not solely an intellectual process. See Lemaine, MacLeod, Mulkay and Weingart, op. cit. note 15.
54. Quoted in The Proposed Institution of Chemical Engineers', Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry, 40 (1921), 428R.
55. Colin Divall, 'Education for Design and Production: Professional Organization, Employers, and the Study of Chemical Engineering in British Universities, 1922-1976', Technology and Culture, 35 (1994), 258-288.
56. Technology and Culture, Ibid., 267-271;
57. Divall and Johnston, op. cit. note 24, 209-214.
58. This debate is extensively represented in the pages of the Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry.
59. For a discussion, see Robin Mackie and Gerrylynn K. Roberts, 'Un Secteur a Part? Les Chimistes Industriels et la Society of Chemical Industry dans le Contexte de la Communauté Chimique Britannique', in Ulrike Fell (ed.), Chimie et industrie en Europe: L'apport des sociétés savantes industrielles du XIXe siècle ànos jours (Amsterdam: Editions des Archives Contemporaines, 2000).
60. Roy and Kay MacLeod, 'The Contradictions of Professionalism: Scientists, Trade Unionism and the First World War', Social Studies of Science, 9 (1979), 1-32;
61. James Donnelly, 'Defining the Industrial Chemist in the United Kingdom, 1850-1921', Journal of Social History, 29 (1996), 779-795.
62. Russell, Coley and Roberts, op. cit. note 28, 177-180, 212-217.
63. See for instance, the debate about the value of sandwich courses at the first Annual Corporate Meeting, Chemistry and Industry, 42 (1923), 587.
64. See also Donnelly, op. cit. note 10, 585-586.
65. 'The Training of the Chemical Engineer', Transactions of the Institute of Chemical Engineers, 2 (1924), 23-26;
66. 'The Education and Training of the Chemical Engineer', Transactions of the Institute of Chemical Engineers, ibid., 9, (1931), 14-20.
67. Donnelly, op. cit. note 10, 572-580.
68. Thus, in 1928, one referee advised that a senior industrial chemist from the North of England be admitted even though his qualifications were below standard, whilst in 1939 an Indian candidate was recommended for acceptance, despite his lack of practical experience, on the basis that the Institute would hardly grow in India unless it attracted people with his standing. IChemE membership forms 556, 1574.
69. Unless otherwise indicated, data for this research comes from the 'Chemists Database' as described in footnote 14. The names of council members of the IChemE and other organizations are based on the full lists of council members that were published annually in their journals. The samples of the ordinary members are taken from the membership records of the Institution of Chemical Engineers and the Institute of Chemistry. Members were sampled at their point of entry into the organization and are systematic samples with a random start. Samples of 200 were aimed for in each case. We are grateful to the IChemE and to the Royal Society of Chemistry for permission to use the original membership forms and to staff members who provided access. In addition to the membership forms, data was collected from the registers of the societies, from their journals and other chemical periodicals, from Official Chemical Appointments, the Obituary Notices and Biographical Memoirs of the Royal Society and from standard biographical sources such as Who Was Who.
70. Courses in chemical engineering were offered at Battersea from 1909 and at Imperial College from 1910, and by the 1930s, 6 colleges were awarding diplomas in the subject. The first BSc course appears to have been offered by Glasgow in 1923, but the subject was only really established as a subject of undergraduate study in 1937 when courses were launched at Imperial and University Colleges, London.
71. W. K. Hutchison, 'Industry, Science and the Chemical Engineer', Transactions of the Institution of Chemical Engineers, 39 (1961), 258-262;
72. Donnelly, op. cit. note 10, 573, 580;
73. Divall, op. cit. note 42, 266-267.
74. The job titles analysed are primarily ones given by the members themselves. This was clearly the case with membership forms, but sources such as membership registers were also largely compiled from data provided by the members. Note that the percentages are of the number in each cohort working in industry and this was substantially lower for the other societies than for the IChemE. Whereas 88 per cent of IChemE council members held at least one industrial post, this was true of only 28 per cent of the Chemical Society.
75. The major exception was Sir Alexander Gibb (1872-1958), a leading civil engineer, who became President of the Institute of Civil Engineers in 1936. Gibb served on the ._ IChemE council from 1923 to 1931 and was President from 1927 to 1929.
76. See, for instance, the record of an informal meeting in 1921 when the proposed new institution was discussed. In the face of 'regret' at the need for another institution, both
77. Hinchley and Wbolcock justified it in terms of the needs of industry. Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry, 40 (1921), 428-429.
78. Russell, Coley and Roberts, op. cit. note 28, 158-180;
79. Donnelly, op. cit. note 45, 782-787;
80. R. L. Mackie and G. K. Roberts, 'Rapprochement? The Social Background of a Profession in Debate: Academic-Industrial Relations in British Chemistry, 1918-1943', paper delivered at the HSS Annual Conference, Kansas City, October 1998.
81. Divall, Donnelly, and Johnston, op. cit. note 11, 60-62. For the particular role played by Australian chemists in the munitions industry,
82. see Roy MacLeod, The Arsenal in the Strand: Australian Chemists and the British Munitions Effort, 1916-1919', Annals of Science, 46 (1989), 45-67. MacLeod points out that returning munitions chemists played a leading role in the development of chemical engineering in Australia.
83. 22 of the 26 first council members were also based in London during the first years of the Institution of Chemical Engineers. This London bias might be regarded as another barrier the IChemE needed to overcome: as late as 1939, 263 out of 538 members (49%) had addresses in London or Middlesex.
84. As Divall, Donnelly, and Johnston point out, there were at first differences within the Council about the correct course for the IChemE; 'Professional Identity and Organisation in a Technical Occupation', op. cit. note 11, 69.
85. See, for instance, William Cullen, 'Presidential Address: A Milestone', Transactions of the Institute of Chemical Engineers, 16(1938), 10-16.
86. Samples are of the two Corporate grades: Members and Associate Members. All members of the samples were men. In this they were entirely typical of the IChemE in this period: the first woman was elected to corporate membership in 1970.
87. The IC cohort is for the period 1918-1943 because it was necessary to define it in terms of the IC's own entrance criteria. This means that it covers a slightly longer timespan than the IChemE sample.
88. The low number in the sample entering the nuclear industry is surprising. A sample will not, of course, give precise results for the population (see Note to Table VI). The dates
89. Both Reynolds and Divall explore the relationship which chemical engineers developed with management. Reynolds, op. cit. note 26, 712-716;
90. Colin Divall, 'A Measure of Agreement: Employers and Engineering Studies in the Universities of England and Wales, 1897-1939', Social Studies of Science, 20 (1990), 65-112.