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

The focus of this volume by Professor Russell is the history of organic chemistry, which arose improbably out of early speculations about the construction of chemical compounds, and in particular their electrochemical nature. The rise of electrochemistry and the work of Berzelius were critical in this regard, and receive much attention in the first few chapters in this book. Aspects of the contributions of Frankland (fully explored elsewhere) and those of Kekulê and Hofmann are considered, together with the miscellaneous functions of organic synthesis and the origins of conformational analysis. Questions of chemical organisation are germane to the whole sequence of events and are briefly summarized before the whole last hundred years of organic chemistry are placed in historical perspective.

There are 165 years between Jöns Jacob Berzelius' and Carl Gustaf Bernhard's excursions through the Massif Central in France. In spite of their circumstantial differences, the similarities between the two men of letters is striking. While Berzelius is renowned as one of the founders of modern chemistry and mineralogy, the bulk of Bernhard's achievement has been in the field of neurophysiology--yet both men emerge as having remarkably similar approaches to science and nature. It was as Berzelius' successor to the post of Secretary of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences that first gave Bernhard cause to study his literary remains. This was to provide the inspiration for Bernhard, with Berzelius as his guide, to visit the volcanic landscape, in which the remains of Roman columns, mediaeval castles and cathedrals recalled civilizations which have come and gone through the centuries following the geological eruptions. The book is extensively illustrated with sketches of the countryside, portraits of those known by Berzelius as well as colour photographs of the landscape taken by Bernhard, while the narrative alternates between excerpts of Berzelius' letters and writings and Bernhard's own modern travelogue. The result is a fascinating textual and pictorial record of one of the most beautiful regions of France, and of two highly influential Swedish scientists, spanning the last two centuries.

William Hyde Wollaston made an astonishing number of discoveries in an astonishingly varied number of fields: platinum metallurgy, the existence of ultraviolet radiation, the chemical elements palladium and rhodium, the amino acid cystine, and the physiology of binocular vision, among others. Along with his colleagues Humphry Davy and Thomas Young, he was widely recognized during his life as one of Britain’s leading scientific practitioners in the first part of the nineteenth century, and the deaths of all three within a six-month span, between 1828 and 1829, were seen by many as the end of a glorious period of British scientific supremacy. Unlike Davy and Young, however, Wollaston was not the subject of a contemporary biography, and his many impressive achievements have fallen into obscurity as a result. Pure Intelligence is the first book-length study of Wollaston, his science, and the environment in which he thrived. Drawing on previously-unstudied laboratory records as well as historical reconstructions of chemical experiments and discoveries, and written in a highly accessible style, Pure Intelligence will help to reinstate Wollaston in the history of science, and the pantheon of its great innovators.

William Maclure (1763-1840) was an Amer. geologist & philanthropist who traveled extensively in Europe during the early years of the 19th century, conducting geological surveys & collecting rock & mineral specimens for schools & scientific institutions in the U.S. He has been called "the Father of Modern Geology" for the extraordinary feat of having made a one-man geological survey of the eastern U.S. from Maine to Georgia, & from the Mississippi to the Atlantic. Maclure used his wealth to support such institutions as the Acad. of Natural Sciences of Phila. & to subsidize the work of a number of scientists & teachers. He was also concerned with the reform of education & set up libraries & schools for children of the lower classes. Scholars have questioned why Maclure retired early to devote the rest of his life to science & reform. Some answers may be found in this vol., which includes transcriptions from microfilm of some 20 journals which Maclure kept during his travels & research in Europe; they span the years 1805-15 & 1820-25. Illus.

Beginning with a couple of essays dealing with the experimental and mathematical foundations of physics in the work of Henry Cavendish and Joseph Fourier, the volume goes on to consider the broad areas of investigation that constituted the central foci of the development of the physics discipline in the nineteenth century: electricity and magnetism, including especially the work of Michael Faraday, William Thomson, and James Clerk Maxwell; and thermodynamics and matter theory, including the theoretical work and legacy of Josiah Willard Gibbs, some experimental work relating to thermodynamics and kinetic theory of Heinrich Hertz, and the work of Felix Seyler-Hoppe on hemoglobin in the neighboring field of biophysics/biochemistry. Moving on to the beginning of the twentieth century, a set of three articles on Albert Einstein deal with his early career and various influences on his work. Finally, a set of historiographical issues important for the history of physics are discussed, and the chronological conclusion of the volume is an article on the Solvay Conference of 1933. For physicists interested in the history of their discipline, historians and philosophers of science, and graduate students in these and related disciplines.

Eilhard Mitscherlich (1794-1863) holds an important position among the chemists who created the basis of postLavoisier chemistry. His discoveries of iso- and polymorphism; his pioneering work on catalysis; and his research on benzene and benzene derivatives, the formation of ethers, and alchoholic fermentation belong to the truly fundamental achievements of classical chemistry. In 1822, at the instigation of his mentor Berzelius, Mitscherlich became the successor of Klaproth both as member of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences and as full professor at the Friedrich-Wilhelm University. Despite his long quarrels with Liebig, the most influential chemist in Germany, Mitscherlich remained the most eminent representative of chemistry in Prussia. When he died, an epoch of chemistry in Berlin drew to an end.

After looking at the early careers of Wurtz's two mentors, Liebig and Jean-Baptiste Dumas, Rocke describes Wurtz's life and career in the politically complex period leading up to 1853. He then discusses the turning point in Wurtz's intellectual life—his conversion to the "reformed chemistry" of Laurent, Gerhardt, and Williamson—and his efforts to persuade his colleagues of the advantages of the new system. In 1869, Adolphe Wurtz (1817-1884) called chemistry "a French science." In fact, however, Wurtz was the most internationalist of French chemists. Born in Strasbourg and educated partly in the laboratory of the great Justus Liebig, he spent his career in Paris, where he devoted himself to introducing German ideas into French scientific circles. His life therefore provides an excellent vehicle for considering the divergent trajectories of French and German chemistry—and, by extension, French and German science—during this crucial period. After looking at the early careers of Wurtz's two mentors, Liebig and Jean-Baptiste Dumas, Rocke describes Wurtz's life and career in the politically complex period leading up to 1853. He then discusses the turning point in Wurtz's intellectual life—his conversion to the "reformed chemistry" of Laurent, Gerhardt, and Williamson—and his efforts (social and political, as well as scientific) to persuade his colleagues of the advantages of the new system. He looks at political patronage, or the lack thereof, and at the insufficient material support from the French government, during the middle decades of the century. From there Rocke goes on to examine the rivalry between Wurtz and Marcellin Berthelot, the debate over atoms versus equivalents, and the reasons for Wurtz's failure to win acceptance for his ideas. The story offers insights into the changing status of science in this period, and helps to explain the eventual course of both French and German chemistry.