"Proud to be a Chemist—Ask Me Why"

Colin A. Russell; Gerrylyn K Roberts, editors. Chemical History: Reviews of the Recent Literature. Cambridge: Royal Society of Chemistry, 2005. xiii + 247 pp. $150.

Reviewed by Mary Virginia Orna

Several years ago the American Chemical Society, partially in response to increasingly bad press accusing the chemical industry of malfeasance and of being a major polluter, began distributing buttons proclaiming “Proud to be a chemist—ask me why.”Many members of the society proudly wore these buttons, but none more proudly than those involved in the history of chemistry and chemical education.

Placing recent chemical achievements into a historical context underlines the enormous contributions that the chemical sciences have made to the well-being of billions worldwide. This is what makes Chemical History: Reviews of the Recent Literature such an important contribution to the chemical literature.

A valuable overview chapter outlines the main trends in the history of chemistry since the publication of the earlier (and parent) volume, Recent Developments in the History of Chemistry, in 1985. Today interest in the history of chemistry has three major emphases: the shift from the classical to the modern period, biographies of famous chemists, and obviously useful chemistry. The author of the overview chapter and the editors of the volume attribute these emphases to chemistry’s position “under the gun.” This emphasis
on the positive can be seen in Chemical History by the omission of a chapter on industrial chemistry (present in the previous volume) and a broader treatment of biochemistry to include medical chemistry, pharmacy, and pharmacology.

Like the 1985 volume, Chemical History contains chapters on the major areas of chemistry (inorganic, organic, analytical, and physical), on chemistry before 1800, medical chemistry and biochemistry, and instruments and apparatus. Each chapter provides an overview of the trends in the disciplinary literature, giving a “thumbnail” of the history of the subdiscipline before 1985 and emphasizing what has been published over the past 20 years. Chapters conclude with bibliographies containing hundreds of references—a gold mine for both professionals and dabblers in chemical history. The choice of authors for each of the chapters is superb: many contributions are by the most prominent person in the field (almost all from the History of Chemistry Research Group of the Open University). Some of the authors are the same as in the 1985 volume. For example, Robert Anderson, former director of the British Museum, wrote the “Instruments and Apparatus” chapter for both volumes.

Because the book is so densely packed with information, Chemical History is best taken in small doses. It is conveniently structured for dipping into an area of interest. The complete name index and fairly extensive subject index will be useful for the more serious researcher as will the bibliographies that include works in non-Western languages, including Russian, Japanese, and Chinese.

A work of this scope cannot cover everything, but it was disappointing to see that the chapter on chemical education, included in the 1985 volume, did not make the cut. In the previous volume Gerrylynn Roberts wrote that the history of institutions and education had emerged as “the heart of analysis in the developing area of the social history of science, which asks questions about the contexts in which scientific ideas are developed, transmitted, and implemented in all their ramifications.” At a time when industry magazines are reporting a crisis in chemical education in the United Kingdom, with a lack of funding for lab-based subjects and the closure of chemistry departments nationwide, it is disheartening to see historians de-emphasizing chemical education as well.

History of chemistry and chemical education are closely linked; the best chemical educators always use history in their teaching and many histories of chemistry have been written by practicing chemists. Hopefully growth in the chemical enterprise elsewhere in the world will override the disturbing trend in the United Kingdom, but the historically minded can do their part with a renewed focus on this important aspect of the history of chemistry. Otherwise we must ask: who will write the chemical history of the future, and will it be much more limited?