Colin A. Russell

Chemical history: reviews of the recent literature

This is a set of bibliographic essays on eight topics in the history of chemistry written by nine experts in the field, aimed at an audience of chemists and teachers of science. It will also be useful to historians of other scientific fields who may need to learn about specific topics in the history of chemistry.

Sir Humphry Davy

Abstract This year marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of the celebrated English scientist, Humphry Davy. Although he has been much criticized, mainly on the grounds that he allowed his social ambitions to take precedence over his researches, the sheer weight of his chemical achievements justifies Berzeliuss description of him—expressed after his death, when all his work could be considered—as the greatest chemist of his age.

Bunsen without his burner

Robert Bunsen did not actually invent the Bunsen burner, but he did make major contributions to physics in areas such as gas analysis and spectroscopy, as described here.

The Social Organisation of Enlightenment Science

There is no ‘inevitability’ about scientific progress. The very variable rates at which science progressed during the Enlightenment — and at other times — should be enough to convince us of this. Some have argued that few scientific theories are entirely value-free and that the practice of science depends greatly upon the cultural context in which it flourishes or wilts. At the very least social changes will affect the rate of scientific advance (leaving aside the question of its direction). The purpose of this chapter is to explore some of the ways in which Enlightenment science was affected by its social framework. In the broadest sense of the term we are talking about the institutionalisation of science. Except for the hypothetical scientist working alone on his desert island, screened from all influences from the outside world, everyone who practises science does so in some kind of institutional framework, even though the institutions may not be primarily designed for science itself (as, for example, when the scientist works for a firm or pursues a strong amateur interest within a loosely structured local community). But the institutionalisation of science as conventionally understood refers to the formally constituted bodies which are dedicated primarily or exclusively to the practice of science.

Edward Frankland and the Cheapside chemists of Lancaster: an early Victorian pharmaceutical apprenticeship.

Summary This paper attempts a critical examination of the thesis that an apprenticeship to a Lancaster druggist was, for Edward Frankland, a wholly inappropriate preparation for a career in chemistry. This view, which stems directly from Frankland himself, is defective in several ways. It fails to take into account certain benefits which he accepted as valuable; it implies an exceptional degree of ‘negligence’ which was in fact quite typical; it ignores certain positive indicators of the value of such experience; and it involves questionable value-judgments on the behaviour of one individual, the druggist Stephen Ross. Although Franklands perspective may be no longer acceptable, the reasons for its inadequacy are perhaps the most important aspect of the whole affair. Their identification raises questions of historiography of wider significance, while the whole episode underlines certain issues in scientific training that were to become crucial in the growth of Victorian chemistry in Britain.

Getting to Know History of Chemistry

This chapter reviews changes in the field since the earlier edition of the book (1985) and introduces online materials in the field.

The archives of Sir Edward Frankland: Resources, Problems and Methods

What papers exist in private hands can only be guessed. I know of a trunk in an attic containing unpublished letters from Darwin, Huxley, Kolbe, Pasteur and a host of others. They are, unfortunately, not available to the scholar and there must be hundreds, if not thousands, of such boxes scattered through America and Europe. As they are discovered, catalogued and made available to scholars, the shape of nineteenth-century science will gradually lose its blurred outlines and the origins of modern science will become clear.3

Science for the Masses, 1825–1850

The design of the now famous Lecture Theatre at the Royal Institution, London, ought to have been an uncontroversial affair.1 By 1801 the building was completed, very like the theatre in the Andersonian Institution, Glasgow, from whence had lately come the Royal Institution’s first professor, Thomas Garnett. It was, however, the brain-child of the Clerk of Works, Thomas Webster (or so he claimed). Aware of the spirit of philanthropy in which the Royal Institution had been conceived, Webster was anxious to establish a school for mechanics, enabling them to understand the rudiments of science and mechanical drawing. As part of that scheme, which was coolly received by the Managers, he included in the theatre a gallery, ‘intended for those who either wished to be less observed, or who, for obvious reasons, would not like to sit down by their employers’.2 This gallery was reached by a separate stone staircase which led directly from Albemarle Street without communicating with any other part of the building; in this way the mechanics could come and go without meeting anyone else. This is where the controversy began. Webster wrote:3 I was asked rudely (by an individual whom I shall not now name) what I meant by instructing the lower classes in Science? I was told likewise it was resolved upon that this plan must be dropped as quickly as possible. It was thought to have a dangerous political tendency. I was thus told if I persisted I would become a marked man!

Interlude: Change and Continuity in French Science

The Industrial Revolution in Britain was a relatively peaceful transition. The French Revolution was a violent series of convulsions that brought about social changes of the first magnitude. For many years the dominant note in discussions of late eighteenth-century France has been that of discontinuity, though there has been some questioning of that emphasis with a new perception of unbroken threads connecting the Ancien Regime to the Empire.2 The role of science in these upheavals has been similarly reassessed3 and a picture is emerging of an increasingly politicised science whose image and function changed considerably from (say) 1789 to 1815. Outwardly innovatory in character, it nevertheless preserved numerous elements from the past, and in these respects partook strongly of the characteristics of the culture within which it was nourished.

Epilogue: Science Triumphant?

On Monday, 12 August 1844, the pioneer of the chemical atomic theory, John Dalton, was honoured in death by his fellow citizens. Against the wishes of his Quaker friends (and probably his own as well) he was given a public funeral in Manchester, after a lying-in-state in a gas-lit room in the Town Hall, where it is said over 40,000 people came to pay their last respects. Through streets lined with silent crowds the procession of nearly one hundred carriages made its way to Ardwick Cemetery, where his remains were laid to rest. Most remarkably, in an almost unprecedented gesture, shops and warehouses throughout the city were closed in honour of the great natural philosopher. For many years Dalton had rarely left the city of his adoption, and the pageantry of his funeral testifies to the vigour of local patriotism. Here was a man of learning, whose atomic theory was little heeded by his scientific contemporaries and almost certainly incomprehensible to most of his fellow Mancunians, and yet he had in some way helped to put their city on the map. They were very proud of him.1