Malaria chemotherapy and the "kaleidoscopic" organisation of biomedical research during world war II

The paper describes the organisational and scientific evolution of the US antimalarial program during World War II. This program screened some 14,000 compounds for antimalarial activity, selected atabrine as the drug of choice in 1943, and later identified chloroquine as a superior compound. It became, arguably, the largest biomedical research effort of the first half of the twentieth century, involving chemical and pharmaceutical companies, diverse university researchers, and non-profit and government laboratories. Beyond scientific research, the innovations of the wartime antimalarial program were chiefly in three areas, communication, scale and administration. The program drew on resources - intellectual, material and organisational - created in Germany by researchers at Bayer, and in the US by the Rockefeller Foundation and Institutes. The paper examines the antimalarial program as one of the formative models for later programs such as the National Institutes of Health. This account supports the claim that wartime work was essential to the development of NIH, if only because the confused and faltering structures of the early war years, 1939-1943, do not suggest that all the organisational infrastructure for large scale, multi-centre co-operative research was in place prior to World War II.     

Anecdotal History of Styrene and Polystyrene

A formal history of styrene and polystyrene from 1839 through 1952 appears in the Styrene monograph edited by Boundy and writer but now out of print. Updating of the story by several teams of Dow writers appeared in the Kirk-Othmer Encyclopedia, the Encyclopedia of Polymer Science and Technology, and the SPE Award address of Amos. We propose a more personalized history written from the perspective of one whose 40-year professional career was involved in scientific and technological aspects of the subject. We view this history as a complex interplay of science, technology, industrial activity, management decisions, legal and patent activities, people, and the vagaries of World War II. Germany had an early industrial lead prior to 1941 with a monomer process and mass polymerization techniques. Original work on styrene-butadiene elastomers was another first. Germany also had a scientific lead as academic scientists such as Staudinger, Kern, Schulz, Jenckel, and Ueberreiter became involved in the chemistry and physics of styrene and polystyrene (PS). Mark was first in industry and then in the university. Several United States companies were active with styrene and PS, also prior to 1941. Involvement of the United States in World War II lead to a government decision to produce SBR. This catapulted styrene into a major synthetic chemical. The lead passed from Germany to the United States, especially with the large excess capacity for monomer after 1945. Management decisions encouraged diverse large-scale polymer uses for styrene, aided by the low price for the monomer. Through a bizarre series of events (war, people, and legal action), proprietary industrial knowledge in both Germany and the United States had diffused into the domain of public knowledge. Styrene and PS now face the problems of any petrochemical product.     

One hundred years of the Fritz Haber Institute

We outline the institutional history and highlight aspects of the scientific history of the Fritz Haber Institute (FHI) of the Max Planck Society, successor to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry, from its founding in 1911 until about the turn of the 21st century. Established as one of the first two Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes, the Institute began as a much-awaited remedy for what prominent German chemists warned was the waning of Germany's scientific and technological superiority relative to the United States and to other European nations. The history of the Institute has largely paralleled that of 20th century Germany. It spearheaded the research and development of chemical weapons during World War I, then experienced a "golden era" during the 1920s and early 1930s, in spite of financial hardships. Under the National Socialists it suffered a purge of its scientific staff and a diversion of its research into the service of the new regime, accompanied by a breakdown in its international relations. In the immediate aftermath of World War II it suffered crippling material losses, from which it recovered slowly in the postwar era. In 1952, the Institute took the name of its founding director and the following year joined the fledgling Max Planck Society, successor to the Kaiser Wilhelm Society. During the 1950s and 1960s, the Institute supported diverse research into the structure of matter and electron microscopy in its geographically isolated and politically precarious location in West Berlin. In subsequent decades, as Berlin benefited from the policies of détente and later glasnost and the Max Planck Society continued to reassess its preferred model of a research institute, the FHI reorganized around a board of coequal scientific directors and renewed its focus on the investigation of elementary processes on surfaces and interfaces, topics of research that had been central to the work of Fritz Haber and the first "golden era" of the Institute. Throughout its one-hundred-year history, the Institute's pace-setting research has been shaped by dozens of distinguished scientists, among them seven Nobel laureates. Here we highlight the contributions made at the Institute to the fields of gas-phase kinetics and dynamics, early quantum physics, colloid chemistry, electron microscopy, and surface chemistry, and we give an account of the key role the Institute played in implementing the Berlin Electron Synchrotron (BESSY I and II). Current research at the Institute in surface science and catalysis as well as molecular physics and spectroscopy is exemplified in this issue [Angew. Chem. 2011, 123, 10242; Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2011, 50, 10064].     

Letter to the Editor Industrial Mixed Acid Nitration

Abstract

Biochemistry — including molecular biology — constituted a major part of Dutch chemical research over the period from 1940 to 1980. However, the Netherlands did not occupy a strong position in that field of research after the Second World War. The present paper seeks to explain the successful development of biochemistry in the Netherlands into an independent discipline of international standing. Formulating the goal of biochemistry as “science for its own sake” played an important role in this development. Post-doctoral positions, senior fellowships and editorships of journals were crucial for biochemistry in the Netherlands in building a network of international contacts that could keep researchers informed about current developments. Westenbrink and Slater were key participants in the development of these networks. These two scientists developed international contacts via fellowships and as editors of major biochemical journals. It was through these forms of communication that the hitherto peripheral Dutch biochemical research community gained a more central position.     

Chemische Kampfstoffe: Ein Überblick

For a long time people used chemicals to weaken or incapacitate their opponents. In World War I a sad peak was reached with the massive use of poisonous gas. Iraq's success using chemical weapons against Iran stimulated some emerging countries to acquire chemical weapons after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The intelligence community estimates their number of up to 30 countries. In 1997 an international law came into force to stop further proliferation and guarantee destruction of chemical weapons till 2007. So far already 147 countries ratified this treaty — but not countries like Iraq, Syria and North Korea. Even for an individual with sufficient criminal energy it is possible to spread terror with chemical weapons. So, control is mandatory, panic certainly not.     

The Operational System of National Accreditation of Laboratories in China

This document gives a brief introduction to CNACL (China National Accreditation Committee for Laboratories). Laboratory accreditation in China is integrally administrated by the China State Bureau of Quality and Technical Supervision, a government administrative department of China State Council, which authorizes CNACL to implement Chinese laboratory accreditation activities. CNACL was established on September 20, 1994. It is a full member of both ILAC (International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation), and APLAC (Asia Pacific laboratory Accreditation Cooperation), and signed the APLAC MRA (Mutual Recognition Arrangement) in New Delhi, India on December 3, 1999. CNACL carries out laboratory accreditation activities in full compliance with international general criteria. Its operation complies with ISO/IEC Guide 58 (1993), ISO/IEC 17025 (1999), ISO/IEC Guide 43 (1997) and other international standards.     

Chemistry Resources on the Worldwide Web in China

The World Wide Web (WWW) has become one of the most important ways for chemists to collect the newest information in chemistry. Many web sites provide comprehensive chemical information resources. In China, some special web sites have been established to provide information resources in chemistry. One of the most important web site is ChIN (The International Chemical Information Network, www.chinweb.com.cn or chin.icm.ac.cn) supported by Chinese Academy of Sciences and National Natural Science Foundation of China.     

Metrological traceability for benzo[a]pyrene quantification in airborne particulate matter

Airborne particulate matter (PM) represents one of the most important sources of urban pollution due to its physical and chemical properties. There is a great concern for PM dangerous effects on human health because particles can deeply penetrate into the respiratory system, carrying the contaminants adsorbed onto their surface. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are a class of organic contaminants that can be adsorbed onto PM and can have harmful effects on health, due to their particular chemical structure. The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified PAHs as potential carcinogenic agents and benzo[a]pyrene (BaP) as carcinogenic to humans. In this paper, the development of a metrologically traceable procedure for the quantification of BaP in airborne PM, performed at the Italian National Institute of Metrological Research (Istituto Nazionale di Ricerca Metrologica—I.N.Ri.M.), is presented. The identification and quantification of BaP in PM samples were carried out by gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry (GC–MS). Metrological traceability was established in all the procedure steps, after performing the method validation. Suitable certified reference materials (CRMs) were used both to validate the analytical method and to calibrate the GC–MS. The measurement uncertainty was evaluated by identifying and taking into account all the relevant sources deriving from the whole procedure steps.     

Quality information from the grapevine

A letter by Lucien Herr, a highly regarded leading French intellectual at the time of World War I, provides capsule portraits of chemists such as Gabriel Bertrand, Paul Lebeau, Charles Moureu, and Georges Urbain. It makes us better aware of who they were and of how their contemporaries saw their work, which had much to do with their personalities, whether congenial or abrasive. This article is concerned with the kind of information carried by the so-called grapevine. It can be invaluable to the historian, for the light it sheds on the character of a scientist. The document drawn upon, from World War I (1915), depicts graphically the personalities of some of the French chemists engaged in the rush to design and produce chemical weapons. It is a frank and even brutal appraisal of their strengths and weaknesses. This is the kind of evaluation that scientists routinely engage in, but devoid of the hyperbole, pro or con, which usually flavours it.     

Determination of pyromellitic acid in aqueous matrices by HPLC

Summary A rapid method for the HPLC determination of pyromellitic acid in aqueous media used as food simulants has been developed and is described in this paper. The proposed method can determine pyromellitic acid at ppb trace levels and is based on an ionic exchange separation mechanism. The method herein developed has been applied to the determination of pyromellitic acid residues leached from plastic bottles.Research partially supported by National Research Council of Italy, Special Project RAISA, sub-project 4, Paper N.696.     

Direct electrochemistry of hemoglobin immobilized on CdS:Mn nanoparticles

The First International Congress of Applied Chemistry was organised by the Association of Belgian Chemists in 1894, the eighth and last was held in Washington and New York in 1912. These congresses, unlike the early congresses on pure chemistry, were very successful and held with the highest patronage in the host countries. The ninth planned for St. Petersburg in 1915 was not held due to the intervention of the First World War. The initiative passed to IUPAC but due to political and financial restraints the International Congresses of Pure and Applied Chemistry did not commence till 1934.     

Private initiatives, public support, and war practices: development of fertilisers in Russia

The scarcity of experiments with fertilisers, the poor domestic industry, and high prices for imported products made Russia lag far behind the leading agrarian countries in the research and use of fertilisers. The first experiments on fertilisers were connected mostly with the private estates of Russian nobility. Things began to change slowly by the turn of the twentieth century, when the Ministry of Agriculture launched a policy of agricultural science promotion, including the development of agricultural chemistry. It was the outbreak of World War I that created a powerful stimulus for fertiliser research in Russia. A specific Russian "symbiosis" emerged between military industry and agricultural chemistry. The numerous factories of explosives set up ad hoc produced vast amounts of waste products; modified, they could serve as fertilisers. In 1915, the Public Committee for Support of Fertilisers was organised. Eventually, this committee gave birth to the Institute of Fertilisers, the first institute founded by the Bolshevik government. Thus, the project of "chemicalisation of agriculture," usually described as a revolutionary endeavour, was firmly rooted in World War I.     

Chemistry databases of the scientific and technical network STN International

Chemistry databases of the largest international scientific and technical information network, STN International, are characterized in detail. The searching and analytical facilities of STN International and their use in chemical research are considered.     

颜色背后的化学——一款以颜色为科普主题的实物展架的开发

北京大学化学国家级实验教学示范中心开发了一款以"颜色背后的化学"为主题的用于科普的实物展架。它以颜色相关化学理论为逻辑主线,通过展示化学物质的颜色,系统地科普物质背后的颜色成因。本文主要介绍了此款化学实物展架的设计理念、展示内容及其应用场景。     

Determination of mustard and lewisite related compounds in abandoned chemical weapons (Yellow shells) from sources in China and Japan

Knowledge of the states of the contents in chemical munitions that Japanese Imperial Forces abandoned at the end of World War II in Japan and China is gravely lacking. To unearth and recover these chemical weapons and detoxify the contents safely, it is essential to establish analytical procedures to definitely determine the CWA contents. We established such a procedure and applied it to the analysis of chemicals in the abandoned shells. Yellow shells are known to contain sulfur mustard, lewisite, or a mixture of both. Lewisite was analyzed without thiol derivatization, because it and its decomposition products yield the same substances in the derivatization. Analysis using our new procedure showed that both mustard and lewisite remained as the major components after the long abandonment of nearly 60 years. The content of mustard was 43% and that of lewisite 55%. The viscous material found was suggested to be mostly oligomers of mustard. Comparison of the components in the Yellow agents with mustard recovered in both Japan and China showed a difference in the impurities between the CWAs produced by the former Imperial navy and those by the former Imperial army.     

Making War Work for Industry: The United Alkali Company's Central Laboratory During World War One

The creation of the Central Laboratory immediately after the United Alkali Company (UAC) was formed in 1890, by amalgamating the Leblanc alkali works in Britain, brought high expectations of repositioning the company by replacing its obsolete Leblanc process plant and expanding its range of chemical products. By 1914, UAC had struggled with few exceptions to adopt new technologies and processes and was still reliant on the Leblanc process. From 1914, the Government would rely heavily on its contribution to the war effort. As a major heavy-chemical manufacturer, UAC produced chemicals for explosives and warfare gases, while also trying to maintain production of many essential chemicals including fertilisers for homeland consumption. UAC's wartime effort was led by the Central Laboratory, working closely with the recently established Engineer's Department to develop new process pathways, build new plant, adapt existing plant, and produce the contracted quantities, all as quickly as possible to meet the changing battlefield demands. This article explores how wartime conditions and demands provided the stimulus for the Central Laboratory's crucial R&D work during World War One.     

Quality Information from the Grapevine

Abstract

A letter by Lucien Herr, a highly regarded leading French intellectual at the time of World War I, provides capsule portraits of chemists such as Gabriel Bertrand, Paul Lebeau, Charles Moureu, and Georges Urbain. It makes us better aware of who they were and of how their contemporaries saw their work, which had much to do with their personalities, whether congenial or abrasive. This article is concerned with the kind of information carried by the so-called grapevine. It can be invaluable to the historian, for the light it sheds on the character of a scientist. The document drawn upon, from World War I (1915), depicts graphically the personalities of some of the French chemists engaged in the rush to design and produce chemical weapons. It is a frank and even brutal appraisal of their strengths and weaknesses. This is the kind of evaluation that scientists routinely engage in, but devoid of the hyperbole, pro or con, which usually flavours it.     

Crisis, change and creativity in science and technology: chemistry in the aftermath of twentieth-century global wars

This paper presents the organising ideas behind the symposium "Chemistry in the Aftermath of World Wars," held at the 23rd International Congress of History of Science and Technology, Budapest, 2009, whose theme was "Ideas and Instruments in Social Context." After first recounting the origins of the notion of "crisis" as a decisive turning point in general history as well as in the history of science, the paper presents war and its aftermath as a form of crisis that may affect science and technology, including chemistry, in a variety of contexts and leading to a variety of types of change. The twentieth-century world wars were exemplary forms of crisis, whose aftermaths shaped the contexts for decisive changes in modern chemistry, which continue to offer challenging opportunities for historical research. In discussing these, the paper cites selected current literature and briefly describes how the individual papers of the symposium, including the three papers published in this volume, approached these challenges.     

History of Synthetic Rubber

Synthetic rubber undoubtedly represents the earliest development of the synthesis of macromolecules. It dates back to the historic discovery by Greville Williams in 1860 that isoprene is the “mother substance” of natural rubber. Attempts to convert isoprene, and later other 1,3-dienes, to a synthetic rubber began shortly thereafter, although the first commercial production of such a material did not take place until a half century later. The period between World War I and II witnessed the first development of a true synthetic substitute for natural rubber, i.e., sodium-polymerized butadiene, which was produced in Germany as Buna rubber and in the USSR as SK rubber. However, during the 1930s, Germany developed the emulsion copolymerization of butadiene-styrene (Buna S), whereas sodium polybutadiene continued as the principal general purpose synthetic rubber in the Soviet Union. The United States which, up till then, had only developed special-purpose synthetic rubbers like neoprene, entered the synthetic rubber age during the emergency of World War II when natural rubber supplies were cut off, and developed a giant industry based on Buna S technology virtually overnight.

Among the synthetic polymers in use today, synthetic rubber is unique in that it was developed not as an interesting new material but to fill a dire need of the modern world. As a matter of fact, here in the United States, it arose solely out of the emergency of World War II.

The reason for this unique position of synthetic rubber is, of course, the unique property of rubber, the only substance which exhibits long-range elasticity, and which therefore fills a special need in modern technology. Natural rubber was discovered in the New World as early as Columbus's voyages, but its use in technology did not really take place until after the Industrial Revolution, i.e., with the start of the 19th century. However, it was not until the latter part of the last century that the first attempts were made to synthesize rubber from simple chemical compounds.     

Unrestricted Hartree-Fock instabilities in nuclear spin-spin coupling calculations. The MNDO method

The MNDO wavefunction is used to calculate the Fermi contact term of nuclear spin-spin coupling constants. Owing to the presence of non-singlet unrestricted Hartree-Fock instabilities of the wavefunction, convergence problems arise in a rather large set of molecules, especially those containing molecular orbitals. A special technique to cope with this situation is presented. The MNDO and transmitted components of the coupling constants in the ethylene molecule are also calculated and compared with those previously obtained with the INDO and INDO/S methods.Part of a Ph.D. thesis (G.E.S.) to be presented to the University of Buenos Aires.Commission of Scientific Research (CIC, Pcia. Bs. As.) fellow.Argentine National Research Council (CONICET) fellow.Member of the Argentine National Research Council (CONICET).