Torbern Bergman was one of the greatest chemists of the 18th century. He edited this collection of lectures in chemistry by H.T. Scheffer and published it in 1775. It was probably the first book designed to be used as a textbook for university classes in chemistry. Bergman presented the first of his successively improved Tables of Elective Attractions in this book, a table of the chemical elements which was one of the earliest attempts to present all the chemical elements and their properties in a single table. This table preceded the modern periodic table of the elements by nearly a century. It is of basis of this table that Bergman is considered to be the father of physical chemistry. One of the many discoveries described in this book is Scheffer's `Pelican Experiment'. which disproved the transmutation of elements, and preceded by two decades the identical experiment carried out by Antoine Lavoisier. This book will be of interest to historians of science and chemists in particular. Scientists in general and educators will also be interested to read this book. It can be used as additional reading in history courses.

This book tells the story of two of the most important figures in the history of chemistry. Carl Wilhelm Scheele (1742–1786) was the first to prepare oxygen and realise that air is a mixture of nitrogen and oxygen; he also discovered many important organic and inorganic substances. His fellow chemist and good friend, Torbern Bergman (1735–1784), was one of the pioneers in analytical and physical chemistry. In this carefully researched biography, the author, Anders Lennartson, explains the chemistry of Scheele and Bergman while putting their discoveries in the context of other 18th-century chemistry. Much of the information contained in this work is available in English for the first time.

How did the elements get their names? The origins of californium may be obvious, but what about oxygen? Investigating their origins takes Peter Wothers deep into history. Drawing on a wide variety of original sources, he brings to light the astonishing, the unusual, and the downright weird origins behind the element names we take for granted.

Europe is the cradle of the modem international chemical industry. From the middle of the nineteenth century until the outbreak of World War I, the European chemical industry influenced not only the production and control of science and technology, but also made significant contributions towards economic development, as well as bringing about profound changes in working and living enviromnents. It is a highly complex heritage, both rich and threatening, that calls for close scrutinity. Fortunately, a unique opportunity to explore the historical development of the European chemical industry from a variety of novel standpoints, was made possible during 1993 as part of the European Science Foundation (ESF) programme called 'The Evolution of Chemistry in Europe, 1789-1939.' This process of exploration has taken place through three workshops, each dealing with different time periods. The workshop concerned with the period 1850-1914, which corresponds roughly to the so-called Second Industrial Revolution, was held in Maastricht, The Netherlands, on 23-25 March 1995. This volume is the outcome of that workshop. The other workshops dealing with European chemical industry were held in Liege in 1994, covering the First Industrial Revolution period, 1789-1850, and Strasbourg in 1996, covering the period between the two World Wars.

In the twentieth century, dyes, pharmaceuticals, photographic products, explosives, insecticides, fertilizers, synthetic rubber, fuels, and fibers, plastics, and other products have flowed out of the chemical industry and into the consumer economies, war machines, farms, and medical practices of industrial societies. The German chemical industry has been a major site for the development and application of the science-based technologies that gave rise to these products, and has had an important role as exemplar, stimulus, and competitor in the international chemical industry. This volume explores the German chemical industry's scientific and technological dimension, its international connections, and its development after 1945. The authors relate scientific and technological change in the industry to evolving German political and economic circumstances, including two world wars, the rise and fall of National Socialism, the post-war division of Germany, and the emergence of a global economy. This book will be of interest to historians of modern Germany, to historians of science and technology, and to business and economic historians.

In the eighteenth century, chemistry was transformed from an art to a public science. Chemical affinity played an important role in this process as a metaphor, a theory domain, and a subject of investigation. Goethe's Elective Affinities, which was based on the current understanding of chemical affinities, attests to chemistry's presence in the public imagination. In Affinity, That Elusive Dream, Mi Gyung Kim restores chemical affinity to its proper place in historiography and in Enlightenment public culture. The Chemical Revolution is usually associated with Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier, who introduced a modern nomenclature and a definitive text. Kim argues that chemical affinity was erased from historical memory by Lavoisier's omission of it from his textbook. She examines the work of many less famous French chemists (including physicians, apothecaries, metallurgists, philosophical chemists, and industrial chemists) to explore the institutional context of chemical instruction and research, the social stratification that shaped theoretical discourse, and the crucial shifts in analytic methods. Apothecaries and metallurgists, she shows, shaped the main theory domains through their innovative approach to analysis. Academicians and philosophical chemists brought about two transformative theoretical moments through their efforts to create a rational discourse of chemistry in tune with the reigning natural philosophy. The topics discussed include the corpuscular (Cartesian) model in French chemistry in the early 1700s, the stabilization of the theory domains of composition and affinity, the reconstruction of French theoretical discourse in the middle of the eighteenth century, the Newtonian languages that plagued the domain of affinity just before the Chemical Revolution, Guyton de Morveau's program of affinity chemistry, Lavoisier's reconstruction of the theory domains of chemistry, and Berthollet's path as an affinity chemist.

Historians and philosophers of science offer 18 papers from a European Science Foundation workshop held in Uppsala, Sweden, in February 1996, explore such questions as how textbooks differ from other forms of chemical literature, under what conditions they become established as a genre, whether they develop a specific rhetoric, how their audiences help shape the profile of chemistry, translations, and other topics. Only names are indexed.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1970. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived