Stepping through science's door: C. W. Scheele, from pharmacist's apprentice to man of science

This reinterpretation of Carl Wilhelm Scheele's (1742-86) early life and career analyses the social interplay between Scheele and other chemists who were active in eighteenth-century Sweden. It is argued that Scheele, a rather lowly journeyman working in peripheral pharmacies, had to work hard and traverse several geographical and social boundaries to gain a foothold in the scientific community. Eventually, Scheele's skilful analysis of the mineral magnesia nigra would establish him as one of the pivotal Swedish chemists. However, this happened only after Scheele had managed to prove himself as a knowledgeable chemist who did not threaten the authority of certain socially superior colleagues. When Scheele had gained a place in the scientific community, the exchange logic of the eighteenth-century republic of letters permitted him to trade experimental results for other kinds of resources. Hence, he gained in both social status, economic prosperity and scientific prominence in a relatively short time.     

Philippe Landrieu (1872–1926), un chimiste engagé dans la politique expérimentale

From Jean-Baptiste Dumas to Chaïm Weizmann and to Margaret Thatcher, including Alfred Naquet, Marcelin Berthelot, Auguste Scheurer-Kaster, Stanislao Cannizzaro, Frédéric Joliot etc., there are few chemists who, at one time or another, have not been tempted to enter politics. Philippe Landrieu is certainly one of the lesser known of this group, even if he had a laudatory Obituary in both the Bulletin de la Société chimique de France, and La Nouvelle Revue socialiste. The events in which he was involved, the utopias for which he was searching, his double career, and his scientific work, nothing was ordinary in his busy life. This Note, as well as placing him in the social history of the last century, will also recall his work as a chemist, and the unresolved problems in which he was interested.     

Looking for an Order of Things: Textbooks and Chemical Classifications in Nineteenth Century France

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to reconsider the issue of the creativity of textbook writing by exploring the links between nineteenth-century French textbooks and the quest for a classification of elements. The first section presents the elegant combination of didactic and chemical constraints invented by eighteenth-century chemists: the order of learning — from the known to the unknown — and the order of things — from the simple to the complex — were one and the same. In section two we argue that the alleged coincidence did not help the authors of elementary textbooks required for the new schools set up by the French revolution. Hence the variety of classifications adopted in the early nineteenth century. A debate between natural and artificial classifications raised a tension in the 1830s without really dividing the chemical community. Rather it ended up with the adoption of a hybrid classification, combining the rival natural and artificial systems.     

Boerhaave to Black: the Evolution of Chemistry Teaching

Abstract

Hermann Boerhaave (1668–1738) at Leiden and Joseph Black (1728–1799) at Edinburgh were known in the eighteenth-century medical world as inspirational and transforming teachers of chemistry. A critical examination of the content of their courses indicates how the idea and uses of chemistry changed through that century. Boerhaave's chemistry was closely allied to the need for training doctors in the materia medica, while for Black, chemistry had become more detached from medicine and could be of industrial relevance and, thereby, of economic benefit. Most of those attending his lectures would not end up as physicians. Both Black and Boerhaave had strongly held views of their pedagogical responsibilities, and neither had aspirations to develop research schools: that idea had to wait until later.     

The Invention of Theoretische Chemie : Forms and Uses of German Chemistry Textbooks, 1775–1820

Abstract

The most significant outcome of an analysis of the German chemistry textbooks published between 1775 and 1820 was the emergence of the concept of theoretische Chemie. Rather than providing fundamental explanations for substances, affinities or reactions, theoretische Chemie ordered the available chemical facts. For the large group of university-based chemists who lacked technical facilities for experimental research, building these kinds of ordered systems proved an adequate way of contributing to chemistry. Furthermore, theoretische Chemie was important for the self-image of chemistry as a science by offering a framework for integrating new knowledge from various nonscientific fields of practice. In spite of this function, textbook authors discussed their very different ordered systems merely in terms of didactic appropriateness rather than in terms of scientific justification or correspondence with nature.     

An Introduction to The Bibliography of Alchemy—Part I

Abstract

This article contributes to a growing body of research on the dissemination, dispersion or diffusion of scientific knowledge via pedagogical networks. By examining students’ handwritten lecture notes, I compare the eighteenth-century chemistry lectures given by William Cullen (1710–1790) at Glasgow and Edinburgh Universities with those of his one-time student George Fordyce (1736–1802), in London, at first privately and then as part of the medical education of physicians at St. Thomas's Hospital. Part I examines the broad structure of Cullen's and Fordyce's courses, comparing both course content and pedagogical approaches to ask how far knowledge flowed directly ‘downstream,’ and the extent to which it was transformed, translated or transmuted in the process of transmission. Part II (forthcoming) will approach the affinity theories of Cullen and Fordyce in greater depth, revealing the dynamics of knowledge transfer. The results shed light on the transmission of knowledge and skills between master and student, and reflect on whether Fordyce can be better described as Cullen's pedagogical progeny, or less straightforwardly as a tactical translator.     

Interpretation and the Hieroglyphic Monad: John Dee's Reading of Pantheus's Voarchadumia

Abstract

John Dee's marginalia in his copy of Johannes Pantheus's Voarchadumia (now in the British Library) are an interesting source of information about the development of Dee's scientific ideas in the period between the Propaedeumata Aphoristica (1558) and the Monas Hieroglyphica (1564). In reading the book, Dee has systematically compared the text with Pantheus's earlier work, the Ars Metallicae, and noted any differences between the two largely identical works. Therefore, most of Dee's comments are not indications of his own interests, as has previously been assumed. Only the marginalia that are not concerned with comparing the two texts can be taken to express Dee's own views. These marginalia, probably written in 1559, provide evidence that Dee had already at this time a strong interest in cabbalistic methods as a means of gaining knowledge about natural substances. Cabbalistic speculation was to be central to Dee's thought in the Monas Hieroglyphica, and has previously been taken to indicate a dramatic change in Dee's scientific outlook, towards a spiritual quest. In his marginalia in the Voarchadumia, however, Dee appears to be using cabbalistic methods to gain information on wholly material, non-spiritual matters. The abundant use of the symbol of the hieroglyphic monad in the marginalia provides a further source of insight into the alchemical import of the symbol, five years before the publication of the Monas Hieroglyphica.     

Mechanism and Control in Biological Amine Methylation

Biological methylation is a subject that has fascinated mechanistically minded chemists for over 50 years. While early studies were usually directed at C‐methylation in natural products, more recent work on N‐methylation in DNA and proteins is being supported by the results of X‐ray crystallography. From this source, significant mechanistic detail can be gleaned and powerful insights gained into the nature of enzyme catalysis and selectivity in methyl‐transfer processes. The case of the human histone H3 transmethylase SET7/9 is considered in detail and compared to cognate histone lysine methylases. It provides an analysis of Nature's solution to the task of avoiding over‐methylation.     

Tracing Influence in Small Steps: Richard Kirwan's Quantified Affinity Theory

Abstract

This paper presents an attempt to negotiate the familiar historiographical difficulties of tracing influence in science without fear of accusations of whiggishness. Through a close reading of three papers presented to the Royal Society by Richard Kirwan in the early 1780s on specific gravity, proportions and affinity, it seeks to show that the search for the role of influence in the history of science need not be based on a present-centred value judgement of past science. Prevailing historiography tends to link Kirwan's work to notions of definite combining proportions, settling him firmly on the Proust side of the Berthollet–Proust debate and regarding his work as vaguely precursory to Dalton's atomic theory. My reading suggests, however, that these papers may well have had a surprising level of influence on Berthollet's Chemical Statics and should perhaps be viewed through a somewhat different historical lens. I hope to show that the tracing of historical influence can offer valuable insights to historians of science and that when influence is tracked in small steps only, and forwards rather than backwards, we can legitimately follow it without fear of present-centredness clouding our vision.     

Chemistry and Biology of Taxol

One can view plants as a reference library of compounds waiting to be searched by a chemist who is looking for a particular property. Taxol, a complex polyoxygenated diterpene isolated from the Pacific Yew, Taxus brevifolia, was discovered during extensive screening of plant materials for antineoplastic agents during the late 1960s. Over the last two decades, interest in and research related to taxol has slowly grown to the point that the popular press now seems poised to scoop each new development. What was once an obscure compound, of interest only to the most masochistic of synthetic chemists and an equally small number of cellular biologists, has become one of the few organic compounds, which, like benzene and aspirin, is recognizable by name to the average citizen. In parallel, the scientific study of taxol has blossomed. Physicians are currently studying its effects on nearly every known neoplasm. Biologists are using taxol to study the mechanisms of cell function by observing the effects of its interactions with the cellular skeletal systems. Synthetic chemists, absorbed by the molecule's unique and sensitive structure and functionality, are exploring seemingly every available pathway for its synthesis. Indeed, the demand for taxol has risen so in the last five years that alternative sources to the extraction of T. brevifolia are being vigorously pursued. Because of the rapidly expanding scope of research in the multifaceted study of taxol, those who are interested in the field may find acquisition of a reasonable base of knowledge an arduous task. For this reason, this account attempts to bring together, for the first time, in a cogent overview the chemistry and biology of this unique molecule.     

Ene-Reductase: A Multifaceted Biocatalyst in Organic Synthesis

Biocatalysis integrate microbiologists, enzymologists, and organic chemists to access the repertoire of pharmaceutical and agrochemicals with high chemoselectivity, regioselectivity, and enantioselectivity. The saturation of carbon-carbon double bonds by biocatalysts challenges the conventional chemical methodology as it bypasses the use of precious metals (in combination with chiral ligands and molecular hydrogen) or organocatalysts. In this line, Ene-reductases (ERs) from the Old Yellow Enzymes (OYEs) family are found to be a prominent asymmetric biocatalyst that is increasingly used in academia and industries towards unparalleled stereoselective trans-hydrogenations of activated C=C bonds. ERs gained prominence as they were used as individual catalysts, multi-enzyme cascades, and in conjugation with chemical reagents (chemoenzymatic approach). Besides, ERs’ participation in the photoelectrochemical and radical-mediated process helps to unlock many scopes outside traditional biocatalysis. These up-and-coming methodologies entice the enzymologists and chemists to explore, expand and harness the chemistries displayed by ERs for industrial settings. Herein, we reviewed the last five year's exploration of organic transformations using ERs.     

Alexander Crum Brown and his Doctoral Thesis of 1861

Abstract

Organic chemistry began at the universities in the Habsburg Empire about 1840, when Josef Redtenbacher, a post-graduate student of Liebig in Giessen, established the first organic laboratory at Charles University, Prague. Following Liebig's teaching methods, he required laboratory work from his students. Redtenbacher's students then headed the new chemistry departments, which were established after the revolution of 1848. Several of Redtenbacher's students had also been trained as botanists and they focussed their research on phytochemical questions. Austrian chemists also contributed to theoretical organic chemistry. In 1853 Rochleder published a paper in which the quadrivalence of carbon was assumed. A more important contribution was made by Josef Loschmidt in 1861, when he published the graphical formulae of several hundred compounds. In contrast to the ideas of Gerhardt and Kekulé, Loschmidt assumed that the constitution of a compound can be deducted from its reactions. Loschmidt's work attracted little interest abroad and was only rediscovered many years later by Richard Anschütz.     

Mechanical and Chemical Explanations in Du Clos' Chemistry

Abstract

Samuel Cottereau Du Clos (1598–1685) appears as the first French chemist to combine in chemistry (for him, the science of substances, the physics of qualities) demonstrations using the laws of motion with demonstrations using the qualities of chemical principles. In this way, he brought to bear two different and complementary orders of explanation. According to Du Clos, the mechanical considerations represent a first approach, a stage towards the knowledge of “the truth of things” (la vérité des choses) in natural philosophy. He set out his chemistry at the Académie royale des sciences de Paris, especially through his criticism of Boyle's Certain Physiological Essays in 1668–1669.     

Integrating social and environmental justice into the chemistry classroom: a chemist’s toolbox

ABSTRACT

Although the chemical enterprise has provided numerous contributions to humanity, unintended consequences contribute to a disproportionate exposure of hazardous chemicals to certain populations based on race and socioeconomic status. Integrating concepts of social and environmental justice within chemistry curriculum provides an educational framework to help mitigate these impacts by training the next generation of chemists with justice-centered and green chemistry principles to guide their future work. Green and sustainable chemistry technologies can contribute to social equity and environmental justice. However, equity and social justice have only recently become a significant part of the green chemistry conversation. This article summarizes how the authors have explored issues of equity and environmental justice with the green and sustainable chemistry community. It offers a toolbox for college and university instructors containing foundational language, research, and idea-generation that can be used to strengthen the transition of a traditional chemistry curriculum toward a justice-centered one.     

Chivalrous Chemistry

In Science as Public Culture (1992), Jan Golinski argued that Humphry Davy’s career was “substantially responsible” for allowing chemistry to emerge “with greatly enhanced esteem and respectability” from the “crisis” of the 1790s, when it had become associated with the radical politics of the chemists Joseph Priestley (1733–1804) and Thomas Beddoes (1760–1808). In this paper, I will flesh out the transformation noted by Golinski of chemistry into a respectable discipline under Davy’s tenure at the Royal Institution. The dissociation of chemistry from radical politics was achieved through the influence of Davy’s upper-class, female-audience at the Institution. Davy’s audience wanted chivalry, therefore Davy made his chemistry chivalrous. To borrow from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s (1772–1834) assessment of his friend in 1804, Davy was “more and more determined to mould himself upon the age in order to make the age mould itself upon him.”     

New Method for the Synthesis of Lactones via Nickel-Catalyzed Isocyanides Insertion

A novel nickel catalyst for the reaction of tert-butyl isocyanide insertion was discovered. In this approach, 1,2-bis(diphenylphosphino)ethane (L3) serves as an efficient ligand, thereby allowing the preparation of lactones from (o-bromophenyl)phenylethanone derivatives. It is noteworthy that this is the first example of nickel acting as a metal catalyst in the reactions of tert-butyl isocyanide insertion. The significance of this methodology may draw many chemists’ attention in the field of isocyanide-incorporating reactions.

[Supplementary materials are available for this article. Go to the publisher's online edition of Synthetic Communications® for the following free supplemental resource(s): Full experimental and spectral details.]     

Bunsen's British Students

Abstract

Just five British students of chemistry studied with Robert Wilhelm Bunsen (1811–1899) at Marburg in the 1840s, and over a hundred with him at Heidelberg between 1852 and 1888. These pupils were largely responsible for transmitting knowledge of Bunsen's instrumental innovations such as gasometry and spectroscopy to Britain. They also voiced Bunsen's merits as an outstanding teacher. The paper traces (where possible) their careers as researchers, teachers, and industrialists. A list of Bunsen's students is included in the form of a Biographical Register.     

Analytical Chemistry in France

Abstract

In this day and age it is not an easy task to describe in a few pages the current status of any scientific discipline. This is particularly difficult if one deals with a n area such as analytical chemistry in France which is on the upswing. The present wirteup is focused on developments in French universities since the war: we shall not deal with analytical chemistry in industry, even though chemical companies and the French Atomic Energy Commission have had a paramount influence on recent developments. Indeed, French analytical chemists are being educated mainly to serve the needs of industrial laboratories.