Chemistry as the defining science: Discipline and training in nineteenth-century chemical laboratories

Endeavour

Volumn 35, Issue 2-3, 2011, Pages 55-62

  Jackson, Catherine M ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

DYES, REAGENTS, INDICATORS, MARKERS AND BUFFERS;

BUILDING; CHEMICAL ENGINEERING; CHEMISTRY; FURNITURE; GERMANY; HISTORY; HUMAN; LABORATORY; PHYSICIAN; SHORT SURVEY; UNIVERSITY; WORKPLACE;

CHEMICAL ENGINEERING; CHEMISTRY; FLOORS AND FLOORCOVERINGS; GERMANY; HISTORY, 19TH CENTURY; HUMANS; INTERIOR DESIGN AND FURNISHINGS; LABORATORIES; LABORATORY CHEMICALS; PHYSICIANS; UNIVERSITIES; WORKPLACE;

EID: 81555203464     PISSN: 01609327     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1016/j.endeavour.2011.05.003     Document Type: Short Survey

References (51)

1. Cahan, David. 1985. ''The institutional revolution in German physics, 1865-1914.'' Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 15: 1-65.
2. Cahan, David. 1989. An Institute for an Empire: the physikalische-technische Reichsanstalt, 1871-1918. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
3. Gooday, Graeme. 1990. ''Precision Measurement and the Genesis of Physics Teaching Laboratories in Victorian Britain.'' British Journal of the History of Science. 23: 25-51.
4. Important studies include: Tuchman, Arleen Marcia. 1993. Science, Medicine, and the State in Germany: The Case of Baden, 1815-1871. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
5. Turner, R. Steven. 1982. ''Justus Liebig versus Prussian Chemistry: Reflections on early institute-building in Germany.'' HSPS 13: 129-162. This literature is reviewed in greater detail in my PhD dissertation, upon which the work presented in this paper is based: Jackson, Catherine M. 2009. Analysis and Synthesis in Nineteenth-Century Organic Chemistry. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of London. A copy of this dissertation is available at http://www.ucl.ac.uk/sts/staff/jackson.
6. Schaffer, Simon. 1992. ''Late Victorian metrology and its instrumentation: a manufactory of Ohms.'' in Bud, Robert and Susan E. Cozzens, eds. 1992. Invisible Connections: Instruments, Institutions, and Science. Bellingham, WA: SPIE Optical Engineering Press, pp. 23-56.
7. The status of these laboratories is evident throughout this literature, for example in the survey which opened Leopold Pebal's volume describing his new laboratory in Graz: Pebal, Leopold. 1880. Das chemische Institut der K.K. Universitä t Graz. Wien: Faesy and Frick. Key sources on Hofmann and Kolbe respectively are: Meinel, Christoph and Hartmut Scholz, eds. 1992. Die Allianz von Wissenschaft und Industrie August Wilhelm Hofmann (1818-1892): Zeit, Werk, Wirkung. Weinheim: VCH; Rocke, Alan J. 1993. The Quiet Revolution: Hermann Kolbe and the science of organic chemistry. Berkeley: University of California Press.
8. Kohler, Robert. 2008. ''Lab History: Reflections.'' Isis 99: 761-768., 765.
9. Britain, France and Italy all published surveys of laboratories built in Germany during the late-nineteenth century: Festing, Edward. 1871. Report of Visits to Chemical Laboratories at Bonn, Berlin, Leipzig, etc. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode. Robins, Edward C. 1887. Technical school and college building being a treatise on the design and construction of applied science and art buildings, and their suitable fittings and sanitation, with a chapter on technical education. London: Whittaker. Roster, Giorgio. 1872. Delle scienze sperimentali e in particolare della chimica in Germania. Milano: Civelli. Wurtz, Adolphe. 1870. Les hautes études pratiques dans les universités allemandes. Paris: Imprimerie Impériale. Wurtz, Adolphe. 1882. Les hautes études pratiques dans les universités d'Allemagne et d'Autriche-Hongue. Paris: Masson.
10. Hannaway, Owen. 1986. ''Laboratory Design and the Aim of Science: Andreas Libavius versus Tycho Brahe.'' Isis 77: 585-610., 599 and 608-9.
11. This argument draws heavily upon the new history of the origins of synthetic organic chemistry presented in Jackson (2009).
12. Morrell, Jack B. 1972. ''The Chemist Breeders: The research schools of Liebig and Thomas Thomson.'' Ambix 19: 1-46.
13. The new laboratory economy in Giessen is the subject of Jackson, Catherine M. 2008. ''Visible Work: the Role of Students in the Creation of Liebig's Giessen Research School.'' Notes and Records of the Royal Society 62: 31-49.
14. Quantitative analysis of organic substances, which usually contain only carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and (sometimes) nitrogen, seeks to determine their composition, i.e. the percentage by mass of these constituent elements. For more about the development of synthetic chemistry, see Jackson (2009).
15. Muspratt, James S. and August W. Hofmann. 1843. ''On certain processes in which Anilene is formed.'' Mem. Proc. Chem. Soc. 2: 249-254. These experiments were intended to elucidate constitutional information about the product.
16. Kolbe, Hermann. 1865. Das chemische Laboratorium der Universitä t Marburg und die seit 1859 darin ausgefü hrten chemischen Untersuchungen nebst Ansichten und Erfahrungen ü ber die Methode des chemischen Unterrichts. Braunschweig: Vieweg, pp. 7-8. See also Kolbe's description of how the introduction of preparative chemistry was changing practical training (pp. 24-5).
17. These enclosures were described in Carl Wilhelm Bergemann's report to the Prussian Minister on the chemical laboratory at Giessen in 1840, included as Appendix I in Brock, William H. 1997. Justus Liebig: The Chemical Gatekeeper. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 333-341.
18. Brock, William H. 1997. Justus Liebig: The Chemical Gatekeeper. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
19. For more on Hofmann at the RCC see Jackson, Catherine M. 2006. ''Re-examining the Research School: August Wilhelm Hofmann and the Re-creation of a Liebigian Research School in London.'' History of Science 44: 281-319.
20. Hofmann, August W. 1866. ''Report on the chemical laboratories in process of building in the universities of Bonn and Berlin.'' London: Clowes and Son, reprinted from the Thirteenth Report of the Science and Art Department of the Committee of Council on Education. London: HMSO, pp. 291-342, 14.
21. Kolbe 1865, 10-11; Kolbe 1872. Das chemische Laboratorium der Universitä t Leipzig und die seit 1866 darin ausgefü hrten Untersuchungen. Braunschweig: Vieweg., XVIII-XIX.
22. Kolbe 1865, 10-11; Kolbe 1872. Das chemische Laboratorium der Universitä t Leipzig und die seit 1866 darin ausgefü hrten Untersuchungen. Braunschweig: Vieweg., XIX-XX.
23. Kolbe 1865, 8.
24. Hofmann 1866, 9.
25. Hofmann 1866, 294; Kolbe 1868, 28.
26. Kolbe 1868, 53. These rooms included the two main teaching laboratories, the director's private laboratory and the lecture theatre, as well as a number of subsidiary smaller rooms (pp. 59-63).
27. Robins, Edward C. 1887. Technical school and college building being a treatise on the design and construction of applied science and art buildings, and their suitable fittings and sanitation, with a chapter on technical education. London: Whittaker., 49.
28. Robins, Edward C. 1887. Technical school and college building being a treatise on the design and construction of applied science and art buildings, and their suitable fittings and sanitation, with a chapter on technical education. London: Whittaker., 50.
29. Kolbe, Hermann 1868. Das Neue Chemische Laboratorium der Universitä t Leipzig. Leipzig: Brockhaus, XXII-XXIII.
30. Cremer, Albert. 1868. Das Neue Chemische Laboratorium zu Berlin. Berlin: Ernst und Korn., 4.
31. Festing, Edward. 1871. Report of Visits to Chemical Laboratories at Bonn, Berlin, Leipzig, etc. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode., 6.
32. Festing, Edward. 1871. Report of Visits to Chemical Laboratories at Bonn, Berlin, Leipzig, etc. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode., 13.
33. Anschutz and Schulze 1904, Illustration 10.
34. Robins (1887, 46) concluded that good general laboratory ventilation was only possible where the system was mechanically driven, as at Graz and Aachen.
35. Frankland, Edward. 1850. ''On the Isolation of the Organic Radicals.'' Q. J. Chem. Soc. 3: 263-296., 265.
36. Frankland, Edward. 1877. Experimental Researches in Pure, Applied, and Physical Chemistry. London: van Voorst., 144-5.
37. Fischer, Emil. 1909. Introduction to the Preparation of Organic Compounds. Transl. Robert V. Stanford from 8th German edition. London: Williams and Norgate, vii-ix and xi-xvi.
38. Fischer, Emil and Max Guth, Eds. 1901. Der Neubau des ersten Chemischen Instituts zu Berlin. Berlin: Hirschwald.
39. Robins 1887, 49.
40. Kolbe (1872), XXIX.
41. Anschü tz, Richard and Robert Schulze. 1904. Das chemische Institut der Universita ̈ t Bonn. Bonn: Cohen., 39.
42. Elbs, Karl. 1889. Die synthetischen Darstellungsmethoden der Kohlenstoff-Verbindungen. Vol. I. Synthesen mittels Metallorganischer und mittels Cyanverbindungen; Synthesen durch molekulare Umlagerung und durch Addition. Leipzig: Barth., 1.
43. Ophir, Adi and Steven Shapin. 1991. ''The Place of Knowledge: A methodological survey.'' Science in Context 4: 3-21., 3.
44. Hannaway, 1986, 599 and 608-9.
45. Robins (1887, 65) referred to the ''magnificent series of palaces'' at the new University of Strasburg.
46. Shapin, Steven. 1988. ''The House of Experiment in Seventeenth-century England.'' Isis 79: 373-404., 373-4.
47. Schaffer 1992, 24-6.
48. Gooday (1990, 40) associated purpose-built laboratories with physics' ''newlyelevated academic status''.
49. Holmes, Frederic L. 1989. Eighteenth-century Chemistry as an Investigative Enterprise. Berkeley: University of California Press, 124.
50. Olesko, Kathryn M. 1991. ''The Humboldtian reforms, economic factors, and discipline shaping: the case of the Königsberg physics seminar.'' pp. 92-109.
51. Schubring, Gert, ed. 1991. ''Einsamkeit und Freiheit'' neu besichtigt: Universitä tsreformen und Disziplinenbildung in Preussen als Modell fü r Wissenschaftspolitik im Europa des 19. Jahrhunderts. Stuttgart: Steiner, 93.