Research schools of chemistry from Lavoisier to Wurtz
Abstract.
The group which worked with Lavoisier in his laboratory also collaborated with him in publication and jointly edited the journal Annales de chimie. It has a good claim to be considered as a research school. Most historians of chemistry, who have studied the ‘chemical revolution’ in France, have focused uniquely on Lavoisier, giving scant attention to his coworkers and ignoring his assistants, thus overlooking their collective research, which created something of a precedent for nineteenth-century science. It has also been too easily assumed that the Lavoisier story ends with his death in 1794. After his demise, continuity with his ideas and method of working was provided by his former associates, particularly Berthollet in the Society of Arcueil. Further continuity was provided by the successive careers of Gay-Lussac, Dumas and Wurtz. In an increasing spirit of nationalism in the nineteenth century there developed a strong French tradition which looked back to Lavoisier as the founder of modern chemistry and a source of inspiration for collaboration in chemical research.
Lavoisier and his collaborators
It was under the influence of Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier that chemistry really became a discipline1 – a discipline embodied in instruments, techniques and a specific technical language. The discipline involved certain rules and practices; for example, high experimental standards requiring exact measurement where possible. To learn chemistry one needed to work in a laboratory. The appropriate skills could not be learned properly at a distance from a book.2 Science generally became much less the work of the isolated genius and more the result of teamwork. This is reflected in the growth of specialist societies and journals and the multiple authorship of papers. Although many scholars have assumed that this was a nineteenth-century movement, it clearly began in the late eighteenth century and is exemplified in the Lavoisier school and in the journal Annales de chimie. There is clear evidence from the 1780s,3 with a continuous history into the nineteenth century. I will argue that the origin of nineteenth-century research schools is to be found in the eighteenth-century chemistry group of Lavoisier and his associates.
Several studies have been published of research schools in the nineteenth century4 but no one seems to have explored possible antecedents. There was in fact one circle, centred around Lavoisier, which has some claim to be regarded as a research school and which had a major influence on chemical research in the nineteenth century, particularly in France, where an important Lavoisier tradition was established. Lavoisier is remembered as the principal author of the chemical revolution,5 which provided a new thrust to chemical research. But the French chemist, unlike some of his distinguished British contemporaries, such as Henry Cavendish and Joseph Priestley,6 did not work alone, and some scrutiny needs to be given to his immediate circle and the social context of his research. The French chemist had once remarked on the great advantages of working as a team ‘possessing enlightenment, knowledge and means that would have been impossible to find in isolated individuals’.7 This remark applies as much to his private group as to formal academies. Lavoisier was executed in May 1794, but most of his associates survived and provided continuity to the leading figures of early nineteenth-century chemistry.
The claim that Lavoisier founded a school of chemistry was made in a little-known obituary of Lavoisier by his former colleague Antoine Francois Fourcroy in 1796.8 Fourcroy, speaking with inside knowledge, claimed that the Lavoisier school extended from 1776 to 1792, with the greatest period of activity from 1780 to 1792. He therefore saw the 1780s as being the crucial period when the oxygen theory was being established.9 Of Lavoisier’s many collaborators, probably the most distinguished was the mathematician Laplace, who collaborated in several memoirs including, most notably, one on heat.10 Another Academician who worked closely with Lavoisier was the army officer Jean-Baptiste Meusnier, who collaborated on the decomposition of water by chemical means.11 It is significant that, when the research was published, these memoirs appeared under the joint names of Lavoisier and his respective collaborators, as was the case later when the second author was Armand Seguin and the subject respiration.12 When Fourcroy, in his obituary, went on to mention the name of Claude-Louis Berthollet, it was as a witness and collaborator (temoin et cooperateur), which not only implies Berthollet’s closeness but is also a reminder that in the eighteenth century the authenticity of experimental evidence was still felt to be increased by naming expert witnesses.
Lavoisier was sometimes criticized for not giving enough credit to his colleagues, and yet, when he published his general introductory text on the new chemistry in 1789, we find the following acknowledgement:
If at any time I have adopted, without acknowledgement, the experiments or the opinions of M. Berthollet, M. Fourcroy, M. de Laplace, M. Monge, or in general, of any of those whose principles are the same with my own, it is owing to this circumstance that frequent intercourse, and the habit of communicating our ideas, our observations, and our way of thinking to each other, has established between us a sort of community of opinions, in which it is often difficult for everyone to know his own.13
When Fourcroy spoke of a school, he went on to qualify the term. It was, he said, a school where everyone was master and pupil at the same time. In other words, from his point of view, apart from a few juniors of little interest to Fourcroy, it was a group almost of equals, happy to learn from each other. Yet Lavoisier was clearly more equal than the others, or, less equivocally, he was primus inter pares. Also we should not neglect the junior members of the group. At the beginning of his chemical career in the 1770s Lavoisier had been ably assisted by Jean-Baptiste Bucquet, who died in 1780 at the age of 33. Bucquet had abandoned a legal career to devote himself to science. In 1776 he was appointed to a chair of chemistry and, just before his death, he had been elected to the junior rank of the Academy of Sciences. Had he lived, he might well have been the star of the Lavoisier school.
At the time of publication of the Methode de nomenclature chimique (1787), published jointly under the names of Guyton de Morveau,14 Lavoisier, Berthollet and Fourcroy, two other juniors had been invited to devise a system of chemical symbols corresponding to the new names. Although these symbols never came into general use, we can add the names of Hassenfratz15 and Adet (b. 1763) to the list of members of the ‘school’. The nomenclature provides one of the best examples of collaboration. Whereas many scholars assume that the new names were only a small part of the ‘chemical revolution’, it has been argued that much subsequent chemical research was based on an elaboration of the table of names.16 If the nomenclature is emphasized, this gives greater prominence to the contribution of Guyton, who had proposed a rationalized system of names five years before the famous collaborative publication.17
Apart from the collaboration involved in framing the new nomenclature, there was a further occasion of multiple authorship which illustrates a communal ethos. Richard Kirwan published a defence of the phlogiston theory in 1787 and the Lavoisier group decided to publish a rebuttal. Accordingly Madame Lavoisier translated the text into French and a refutation was added at the end of each of Kirwan’s thirteen sections by Lavoisier and his colleagues. Lavoisier himself wrote notes to four sections, Berthollet to three, Fourcroy to three, Guyton to two, and the mathematician Monge to one.18
A research school
Precisely what factors were required to constitute a research school?19 Here are a few major considerations:20
(1) A leader, normally fairly senior, but not sufficiently removed from junior members of the group to hinder friendly contact. The main qualities of a leader would be that he was already an established figure with a research reputation, a person of some influence, preferably with access to research funds.
(2) A research programme.
(3) Preferably a common workplace/laboratory with suitable materials and apparatus and many opportunities for informal discussion.
(4) Access to a common organ for publication.
(5) Often some demonstrable benefit, usually subsequent employment, as the outcome of a period of apprenticeship. This would be most explicit in a university context with the availability of certification and even research degrees.
It would seem that the Lavoisier group qualifies on most of these criteria. As regards age, some might say that most of the senior members belonged more or less to the same Reneration. However, Lavoisier (b. 1743) was the most senior member if we exclude the provincial Guyton (b. 1737), who only took up residence in Paris in 1791 and was a late convert to the oxygen theory. The other senior members were younger – Berthollet (b. 1748), Laplace (b. 1749), Meusnier (b. 1754) and Fourcroy (b. 1755). But seniority might be reck\oned not so much in terms of age as in membership of the all- important Academy of Sciences. Lavoisier had been a member of the Academy since 1768. During the 1770s he published a stream of papers in the Memoires of the Academy, so that by the end of that decade he had become an established figure, reinforced by his promotion to the senior rank of pensionnaire in 1778. We may compare this position with that of Laplace, elected as a junior member of the Academy in 1773 and rising to pensionnaire in 1785. Berthollet only became a pensionnaire in 1792, replacing Lavoisier, who had become treasurer. Fourcroy and Meunier never reached beyond the intermediate rank of associate in the Royal Academy. In relation to chemists being fully and finally persuaded of the great superiority of Lavoisier’s oxygen theory, Berthollet was the first major convert (1785), followed by Fourcroy (1786), although they had been closely associated with Lavoisier for many years before then while he was working out his ideas. Guyton was only converted late in the winter of 1786 to 1787, after he had visited Paris for discussions with Lavoisier.
As regards the question of access to funds, Lavoisier was known to be wealthy and happy to spend a large part of his wealth on scientific research. In relation to friendly contact with juniors, we must remember that pre-Revolutionary French society was relatively formal and hierarchical, so that juniors could hardly discuss matters on terms of equality.21 Nevertheless, according to the spirit of the first criterion above, the Lavoisier group would seem to qualify on most counts.
Turning to (2) above, a consideration of a research programme has in some ways been obscured by the overriding influence of the oxygen theory, which not only gave a more satisfactory explanation of combustion but indirectly gave a new understanding of chemical composition.22 Most later research schools have worked within a speciality,23 whereas Lavoisier reformed the whole area of chemistry. The new theory has been accepted as a classic example of a ‘scientific revolution’ with the negative weight of phlogiston as the crucial anomaly. But Lavoisier went further and in his Traite elementaire (1789) he set out a list of simple substances or elements, replacing the socalled elements of Aristotle. He was careful, nevertheless, to make clear that this was only a provisional list, leaving an explicit challenge to his successors.24 This recognition of a group of simple substances constituted one of the building blocks of modern chemistry. The search for new elements became one of the most general areas of research of the nineteenth century for chemists of all nationalities and cannot, therefore, be associated especially with any one group.
There are various hints in Lavoisier’s Traite of research for future investigators.25 One of the most explicit is in relation to the exact composition of acids and salts which, he says, ‘is a vast field for employing the zeal and abilities of young chemists, whom I would advise to endeavour rather to do well [i.e. to be exact] than to do much’.26
So far Lavoisier’s legacy seems to have been very general. This applies most of all perhaps to the general idea of oxidation. Yet there is at least one line of research which has a good claim to be the beginning of a specific research programme, taken up by his French followers. This relates to the analysis of animal and vegetable substances. Lavoisier’s research programme,27 using oxygen gas, began with a few readily combustible substances; later he tried using metal oxides as oxidizing agents. I will presently make the claim, central for this argument, of continuity in this research. It is probably the breadth of Lavoisier’s contribution to founding virtually a new chemistry which has hitherto prevented most scholars from giving special attention to this research programme.
One might even fancifully sketch a Venn diagram, consisting of three roughly concentric circles. The outer circle would include the entire Lavoisier legacy: the oxygen theory with all its ramifications. The second circle would include Lavoisier’s most general (implied) research programme, notably the search for new elements. Finally, the innermost circle might contain Lavoisier’s quantitative organic analysis. Yet one should not suppose that he wanted to keep this secret. It is simply that his abbreviated lifespan did not allow sufficient time for him or his assistants to develop it.
Having considered the first two criteria for a research school, we may briefly refer to (3), (4) and (5). In 1775 Lavoisier was appointed to the Gunpowder and Saltpetre Administration and in the following April he was given space at the Paris Arsenal, which he promptly converted into what must have been one of the largest and best-furnished chemistry laboratories in the world at that time. It was there that Lavoisier used to work with his associates. Madame Lavoisier, who was often present in the laboratory, described the communal activity:
Some enlightened friends, some young men, proud to be permitted the honour of collaborating in his experiments, gathered in his laboratory in the morning. It was there that they had lunch, that they had discussions, that they worked, that they carried out experiments which gave birth to that fine theory which has bestowed immortality on its author. … The very best craftsmen were admitted to these communal occasions to [plan and] construct the machines that Lavoisier commissioned.28
Many of the young men mentioned by Madame Lavoisier would have been drawn to the Lavoisier circle because he possessed some unique and very expensive pieces of apparatus, often required for novel experiments.29
There must have often been a family atmosphere in the laboratory, heightened by the presence of Madame Lavoisier, with her husband as the father figure. The sharing of a common meal, mentioned above (with Lavoisier probably at the head of the table?), would have contributed to the family feeling.30 The Lavoisier couple never had children but the chemist probably adopted a paternalistic attitude towards his young followers. In the nineteenth-century research school of Henri Sainte-Claire Deville, he was described as offering ‘fatherly advice’ to his research students, and in one case he even paid the dowry of the bride of a student.31 In German universities the supervisor of a successful doctoral student is regularly described as his Doktorvater (‘doctor father’). In many cases the senior figure – Lavoisier included – would have hoped that their proteges would carry on his own line of research.
Among the junior members of the Lavoisier group32 was Eleuthere Irenee Dupont, the son of a friend of Lavoisier. His father actually told the young Dupont to regard Monsieur and Madame Lavoisier as a second father and mother, since they had on one occasion spoken of him as ‘a son’.33 At the age of 16 the young Dupont could start as no more than a laboratory assistant but, if it had not been for the Revolution, he might well have stayed in France and become a chemist in his own right. Having learned about gunpowder production at the Arsenal, and emigrating to the United States in 1799, he was able to establish America’s first gunpowder works.
Although Lavoisier’s first responsibility at the Arsenal was to examine saltpetre (potassium nitrate), his analysis was soon done and, incidentally, actually helped him in his understanding of oxygen.34 His later work for the Gunpowder Commission was mainly administrative, leaving the laboratory free for more general chemical research.
There may still be some doubts about the appropriateness of calling the Lavoisier group a ‘school’ since there was no question of formal instruction. But in the acknowledged nineteenth-century research schools most of the instruction was very informal, and so it was with Lavoisier. The spirit of companionship and enthusiasm for a common goal were more effective than any series of lectures. If it is not in his Traite, Lavoisier’s role as a teacher can be seen most clearly in his success in gradually winning over other members of the group and many outsiders to his oxygen theory.
Lavoisier and his colleagues had often published in the journal Observations sur la physique. Yet they made significantly less use of it after 1785 when La Metherie became editor and began to use the journal to attack the new chemistry and to give regular space to Balthazar Sage, a particularly virulent critic of Lavoisier. It was not until 1789 that government censorship was lifted sufficiently for Lavoisier and his colleagues to be in a position to start their own journal under the title of Annales de chimie.
The careers of Lavoisier’s former colleagues
In order to pursue further the argument for continuity of the Lavoisier school after his execution we need to trace briefly the careers during the revolutionary era of his most prominent chemical associates. In normal times this would probably have been a comparatively simple process but the decade of the French Revolution was anything but normal. There was not only the war, with France fighting much of the rest of Europe, but also the complete reorganization of civil society, with higher education playing a prominent role. In all of this men of science played a major part with a disproportionately important role being given to chemists.
To begin with, Berthollet was very active in the Lavoisier group in the 1780s and early 1790s, but his absence from Paris later in that decade35 may appear to weaken his role as the leading heir to the Lavoisier tradition. In May 1796 he had been sent on government business as a member of a commission on the confiscation of works of art to the Italian states, recently invaded by the French army under the command of Bonaparte. Although he was able to return to Paris in November 1797 (too late to participate in the resumption o\f publication of the Annales], his acquaintance with the victorious general resulted in his being chosen within a few weeks as a member of the subsequent great expedition to Egypt. Accordingly he left Paris a second time in May 1798, not to return until October 1799. Hence, although he had been appointed as a professor at the newly founded Ecole polytechnique (November 1794), he was not able to resume his chemical career until the turn of the century. Nevertheless, his visit to Egypt was not a total loss to chemistry, since his observation of large trona (sodium sesquicarbonate) deposits showed that ordinary chemical reactions could be reversed under suitable conditions.36 This encouraged him to write his Essai de statique chimique (1803) on the physical conditions for chemical reactions.
Whereas the chemist Berthollet kept out of revolutionary politics, the lawyer Guyton was a member of the Legislative Assembly from its very beginning in October 1791.37 When that assembly was replaced in September 1792 by the National Convention, Guyton was again a member for his native department of Cote d’Or. In 1793 he was successively secretary and president of the Committee of general defence. In April 1793, when the famous Committee of Public Safety was established, Guyton was elected president (till July). He continued to follow a political career, but with a lower profile, for a further four years (until May 1797) under the Directory as a member of the Council of 500.
Already in 1793 Guyton had established a committee to consider how science might be used in national defence. Berthollet and Fourcroy were enrolled and helped in the manufacture of gunpowder together with Chaptal. Guyton was not only concerned with armaments but developed the use of hydrogen balloons for military (observation) purposes. In March 1794 a committee was formed, with Guyton and Monge as members, which resulted finally in the foundation of the Ecole polytechnique. Guyton, together with Berthollet and Fourcroy, was among the professors but Guyton was also the director for several years. He managed all these duties despite some premature ageing. His biographer Bouchard says that even at the age of 57 his colleagues referred to him as ‘a venerable old man’ worn out perhaps by his intense (and dangerous) political career. Incidentally, Bouchard complains that, when Lakanal, on behalf of the government, was drawing up a provisional list of members of the chemistry section of the new National Institute, he initially overlooked the obvious choice of Berthollet.38
Like Guyton, Fourcroy too took up a political and administrative career, but only after some initial hesitation.39 In September 1792 he joined the Jacobin Club, placing himself clearly on the far left of the political spectrum. In July 1793 he was elected to the National Convention. He became a member of the Commission of Public Instruction and in 1794 he was elected to the Committee of Public Safety. After the fall of Robespierre there was a more constructive period and Fourcroy drew up historic reports on higher education, on the foundation of the Ecole polytechnique and on new medical schools. Under the Directory (1795 to 1799) he was elected to the Conseil des Anciens and again spoke on educational matters. Under Bonaparte he became a Councillor of State and continued his educational interests, being intensely involved in educational reform in 1805 and 1806. Napoleon instructed him to plan a new ‘University of France’ or grand system of education, a plan which went through numerous drafts. Fourcroy could reasonably have expected to be appointed as head of this new institution but he was passed over. His humiliation may well have hastened his death in 1809. Fourcroy was considered a good lecturer and he had combined his administrative career with professorships at the Ecole polytechnique and the Museum d’histoire naturelle. He also wrote several chemistry textbooks.
We have considered in turn the careers of the three leading chemists who had collaborated with Lavoisier as joint authors of the Melhode de nomenclature chimique of 1787, but have taken Berthollet to be the leading heir to the Lavoisier tradition. To strengthen this claim we must briefly consider Lavoisier’s particular style of chemistry.
He expressed the greatest interest and respect for experimental physics (physique experimentale), a field which must be understood in its eighteenth-century context. It is hardly necessary to insist that this was not ‘physics’ as understood in the second half of the nineteenth century – a subject given unity and coherence by the concept of energy. In the eighteenth century, physics constituted a loose alliance of subjects capable of mathematical treatment, including mechanics and optics. Electricity and magnetism (not yet fundamentally related) were just beginning to be considered mathematically, as was heat, but this raises another problem, since heat was usually considered to be a part of chemistry, as we are reminded by Lavoisier’s introduction of the term ‘caloric’.
Here is an indication that the boundaries between physics and chemistry were still very fluid in the late eighteenth century. It was in keeping with his style of chemistry that Lavoisier entitled his final work Memoires de physique et de chimie. His approach to chemistry was an essentially quantitative one. This was quite distinct from the main interests of chemists like Fourcroy and Vauquelin, whose approach was largely qualitative and with a particular interest in the animal and vegetable kingdoms. Lavoisier’s main contributions to chemistry were in the field of mineral (inorganic) chemistry but, when he looked at the other kingdoms, it was notably with the introduction of an original quantitative approach. His quantitative analysis of a handful of vegetable substances might be considered as the real beginning of organic chemistry as opposed to the study of natural products. The continuation of this research programme will be considered later.
Armand Seguin and Madame Lavoisier
Probably the activity of the Lavoisier research group, as well as its continuity beyond the master’s lifespan, is most clearly exemplified in his collaboration with the young Armand Seguin (b. 1767), trained in chemistry by Berthollet and one of the youngest of Lavoisier’s later collaborators. Altogether he was involved in at least three important areas of Lavoisier’s research: the synthesis of water, the physiology of respiration and transpiration and the techniques required for the fusion of platinum.40 Their joint research on respiration was, of course, an extension of the oxygen theory of combustion. In the illustration (Figure 1) Seguin is seen as the ‘guinea pig’, seated on the left, breathing into a face mask. Lavoisier is standing to the right, controlling the air supply, while Madame Lavoisier is seated, taking notes. In the subsequent publication of results Seguin was given full credit for the major part he had played in the laboratory.41 He was rewarded by having his name added in 1790 to the editorial board of the Annales de chimie. In 1797, on the resumption of publication of the Annales after the break caused by political disruption, Seguin published a report on collaborative research with Lavoisier on respiration and animal heat.42
Figure 1. Lavoisier in his laboratory (from E. Grimaux, Lavoisier, d’apres sa correspondance, ses manuscrits, ses papiers de famille et d’autres documents inedits (Paris, 2nd edn., 1896), opp. p. 119).
One might be forgiven for assuming that a search for a continuation of Lavoisier’s chemical ideas into the following century was largely a construct of the historian. It may, therefore, be worth quoting from a part of the review of Lavoisier’s Traite by Seguin in an early volume of the Annales de chimie. Most of the review is an uncritical description of the contents of the book. Towards the end, however, Seguin wrote,
It was not sufficient for his glory to have enriched science with a large number of important discoveries; he wished to place those who followed him in the same career in a position to make new discoveries by communicating to them all the details of his procedures.43
This claim ignores the difficulties, pointed out by modern sociologists of science, of replicating experimental work simply from a text.44 But what is important here is the apparent intention as expressed by one of his closest later associates. The difficulties decrease further when we consider the readiness after 1800 of former associates of Lavoisier, notably Berthollet, who was more than anxious to pass on the principles and techniques of the new chemistry.
A recent article by Marco Beretta has thrown fresh light on the part Seguin played in the years following Lavoisier’s death in helping to publish the collected memoirs of the latter. It seems probable that Lavoisier entrusted him in 1793 with the task of editing the work.45 In the summer of 1796, two years after Lavoisier’s death, Seguin wrote a preface to the memoirs, in which he claimed (with some justification) to have been a particular friend of the great man (‘grand homme’). He had a special interest in getting the memoirs published, not only to commemorate Lavoisier, but also for his own sake, since the work included many of his own memoirs.46
However, Madame Lavoisier was also concerned to see the memoirs published and there was a proposal for a collaboration between the young chemist and the widow. The proposed collaboration unfortunately broke down when Seguin refused to accept Madame Lavoisier’s insistence that he should publicly condemn her husband’s executioners. She also thought that Seguin was claiming too much credit for himself. Thus when the Memoires finally appeared in 1805 it was with a preface by the widow, who has usually been credited with being solely responsible for the publication.
Seguin reappeared as an authorin the Annales in 1813, when he published the first of a series of memoirs, making contributions to five successive volumes (88 to 92), several of these memoirs reporting joint research he had carried out with Lavoisier on respiration.47 But although Seguin may seem to have been one of the leading candidates to have continued the Lavoisier tradition, in the revolutionary crisis his skill in chemistry had led in a quite different direction. In 1794 he invented a new method of tanning leather, which achieved in a few days what previously had taken months.48 This made a major contribution to the manufacture of saddles and other equipment needed for horses, so vital for the cavalry and army transport at a time when France was engaged in a large-scale war. Seguin became very wealthy and his new status seems to have distracted him from any permanent chemical career.
Lavoisier had married his wife when she was only 14,49 so it is not surprising that she lived on well into the nineteenth century. She died in 1836. When she entered a second marriage to Count Rumford, she insisted on being called Madame Lavoisier-Rumford. Before the Revolution she had presided over a regular salon, to which visiting scientists were invited. In her later years she resumed her salon, although it was now much less of a scientific salon. On entry, one of the regular guests described how visitors were confronted by an immense portrait by the artist David of Lavoisier and his wife as a momento of the ‘chemical marriage’ of the old regime.50 This was an additional way of keeping alive the memory of her late husband. She should definitely not be discounted as a member of the chemical team during her husband’s lifetime. Not only had she been his faithful amanuensis in the laboratory (Figure 1), but she drew complex apparatus for publication in his Traite and she translated English works into French. The early volumes of the Annales de chimie even included a letter on chemical matters from the Italian Landriani, addressed to Madame Lavoisier.51
The grieving widow may have thought that it was thanks to her that the memory of her late husband was not completely forgotten in the early nineteenth century, but her attitude had the opposite effect since, as we have seen with Seguin, she would not accept any compromise in her desire to name and shame his murderers. Her own death in 1836 provided the first opportunity for chemists such as J. B. Dumas to commemorate Lavoisier, as we shall see below.
The Annales de chimie
Lavoisier was concerned not only to reorganize chemistry but also to propagate this reform as widely as possible. The two principal media of propagation were his Trai’te, together with the textbooks of his followers (notably Fourcroy and Chaptal52), and the new journal of chemistry, the Annales de chimie. There was considerable delay in obtaining government permission for the publication of a new journal but this was finally obtained in December 1788, making possible the appearance of the first volume of the Annales at the end of April 1789.53 Although the introduction to the first volume claimed that the journal would be happy to accept articles from chemists of any persuasion, the great majority of articles were by the Lavoisier school. It was soon clear that the Annales was to be a powerful weapon in propagating the new chemistry.
But although Lavoisier was to be the most prominent figure in the early Annales, he was not necessarily the most involved in its actual production. The original editorial board also comprised Guyton, Monge, Berthollet, Fourcroy, Dietrich,54 Hassenfratz and Adet. Unlike most modern journals, all members of the board were expected to contribute actively to the journal, and indeed some payment was offered to authors according to the extent of their contribution. The editorial board met regularly and described itself as the ‘Societe des Annales de chimie’, which, as has been remarked, ‘functioned like a little academy’.55 Whereas it had been usual for scientific journals to be edited by a single person, the Annales from the very first issue presented itself as a collective. In addition to the name of Lavoisier on the title page we find the names mentioned above. We may consider this an alternative indication of the leading members of the Lavoisier school in 1789.56
Pierre-Auguste Adet had originally been trained in medicine but had subsequently taken up the study of chemistry with enthusiasm. After his contribution to the new nomenclature he had suggested that the French chemists should publish a specialist chemical journal. Yet it was almost impossible to obtain government permission. Adet became discouraged and contemplated emigration. Only at the end of 1788 did the situation improve. Adet borrowed money from Lavoisier and, with the final authorization of the Annales de chimie, he was appointed secretary for the journal, giving him a modest source of income. Yet the Revolution soon called him briefly to Santo Domingo as a colonial civil servant. In 1794 he was appointed to the responsible position of plenipotentiary minister to the United States. In the early years of the nineteenth century he followed a political career, illustrating that he found his new power and influence more congenial than a modest career in science.57 Once again the political and military impact of the French Revolution had diverted a promising chemist from taking further the work of Lavoisier, although he still maintained an interest in chemistry as a hobby.
It was the senior members of the editorial board who were to steer the Annales to success. Recent examination of Berthollet’s correspondence with Guyton while he was still in Dijon has revealed that, during the planning stage in 1788 and the subsequent publication of the first few volumes of the Annales, Berthollet filled a managerial role, reporting progress to his provincial colleague and encouraging him to submit material for publication.58 This information corrects the impression which might be given by the title page of the journal that Guyton was the leading editor since, perhaps in deference to his age (or in triumph over his conversion), his colleagues had placed his name before those of the other members of the editorial board.
Lavoisier himself became increasingly occupied in other affairs.59 He was, for example, involved in defending the Gunpowder Administration from public criticism, not to mention his involvement in local politics and his later appointment as National Treasury Commissioner. Nevertheless, he still had a major role in the Annales. With his business experience, he became the treasurer of the Societe, a more than nominal responsibility, since he had to apportion fees to the individual authors. As the senior figure it was he who resolved a conflict when one arose between two junior members.60 He found time to write occasional articles for the Annales, and in Volume 15 (1792) he even contributed two memoirs.
Although the ‘Terror’ of 1793 to 1794 stopped publication, it was resumed in 1797 under the chairmanship of Guyton. When Berthollet returned to Paris he took a prominent part in the running of the journal, as did Fourcroy. This is part of the considerable body of evidence that the Lavoisier school continued after his premature death.
It might be misleading to think of the editorial board as representing a harmonious group with a unified view of chemistry. In reality there were problems of personalities and different ideologies. Fourcroy was soon to bring his close friend Vauquelin onto the board as well as Pelletier, both with strong interests in animal and vegetable chemistry. When Guyton took over chairmanship of the board in 1797 he brought in his friend and fellow Dijonnais Prieur de la Cote d’Or. The chemical industrialist Chaptal, having previously been summoned to Paris by Berthollet to help with the manufacture of munitions, was now available and especially valuable as an early senior convert to the oxygen theory.61 Berthollet was also able later to add Gay-Lussac and Thenard to the board.
No less important than personnel were the different conceptions of chemistry around 1800. The greatest divergence from the Lavoisier model was shown by Fourcroy, the son of an apothecary, who could never escape from the tradition of a chemistry closely allied to pharmacy. Already in 1797, in one of the first volumes published after the break, he contributed to the Annales a long memoir on the alliance of the two subjects. He even went so far as to deplore the tendency of the new chemistry to follow a ‘severe and mathematical method’ and to become ‘more physical’.62 He boldly accepted the editorship of a new pharmacy journal, laying himself open to the charge of divided loyalty. When the pharmacy journal faltered it was Fourcroy who, in December 1799, engineered its absorption into the Annales, and the word ‘pharmacy’ was even incorporated into the sub- title of the journal. When this was being put into effect Berthollet had only just returned to Paris from Egypt and was effectively presented with a fait accompli. Had he arrived back earlier, there is little doubt that he would have opposed this development. It may even have encouraged him to found his own independent group at Arcueil, more in the Lavoisier tradition. Yet the actual pharmacy content of the Annales for the next few years remained very small, and in 1808 plans were made to revive a separate journal of pharmacy. The Annales was always a chemistry journal or, more broadly, a journal of physical science. After all, Lavoisier’s own interests had been wider than chemistry.
Although Guyton, as director, was very much involved in the administration of the Ecole polytechnique, he still made a few contributions to chemistry in his final years, his main interest being in methods of disinfection. He continued as a senior member of the editorial board until his death \in 1815, giving broad support to Lavoisier’s conception of chemistry with a physical dimension. Meanwhile Berthollet was waiting in the wings and, with the death of Guyton, he became the undisputed senior editor. He convened a meeting in which it was agreed to broaden further the scope of the journal by admitting physics as an equal partner. Thus a new series of the Annales was begun with the title Annales de chimie et de physique. Gay-Lussac was appointed editor for chemistry and his friend Arago became editor for physics. Through Berthollet and Gay- Lussac continuity with the Lavoisier group was ensured in this new series of the Annales.
A physical approach to chemistry
A major characteristic of Lavoisier’s chemistry was his concern to incorporate aspects of experimental physics,63 notably in his consistent use of the balance. One line of enquiry, largely unknown to historians, which seems to have been generated by Lavoisier and followed up by two of his former associates was his interest in the microstructure of matter. Relying on statements in Lavoisier’s well- known Traite, it was previously thought that Lavoisier refused to speculate about this.64 It has recently been shown, however, that in a posthumous publication, his Memoires de physique et de chimie, he speculated on several things, including the forces that bound matter together, opposed by the force of caloric.65 Berthollet, who had seen the proofs of this book many years before it was issued, discussed these matters in the first and third sections of his Fessai de statique chimique.66 There is no explicit reference to Lavoisier’s (unpublished) work, but then Lavoisier himself was not famous for always quoting his sources, as modern standards would require. On the other hand there are no less than seven mentions of Lavoisier in the first seventy pages (on oxidation) in Volume 2 of Berthollet’s Essai. It seems that Lavoisier also speculated (uncharacteristically without evidence) about the shape of ‘primitive molecules’ (i.e. atoms) of matter. The interest in micro forces was taken up by Laplace, who concluded that these forces could not be known as long as one did not know the shape of the atoms.67 Interestingly, Lavoisier suggested that a mathematician should calculate the forces between atoms and, after his death, Laplace tried to oblige. In different ways it seems that both Berthollet and Laplace were exploring ideas of their dead comrade.
The first volume of Lavoisier’s Memoires was as much physics as chemistry and this interest in a physical approach to chemistry is reflected in the very title of Berthollet’s book, Essai de statique chimique, and his deep concern with the problem of equilibrium. It can also be seen in the alliance of Berthollet and Laplace in the Arcueil group. They were not only former members of the Lavoisier circle and good friends but also close colleagues convinced of the benefit of the alliance of chemistry and physics.68 That is why, when they announced their association to the world in 1807, it was in terms echoing the final publication of Lavoisier: the ‘Memoires de physique et de chimie de la Societe d’Arcueil’.
Berthollet and the Society of Arcueil
Although Berthollet was the main link with Lavoisier, the link with the latter was strengthened when Laplace, another former collaborator, joined the group, strengthening it and leading to the proud public announcement in 1807 that they had formed the Society of Arcueil.60 There was no suggestion that they were creating a carbon copy of the Lavoisier circle – far from it. The Arcueil group was a development from the Lavoisier circle. How could Berthollet have forgotten the exhilarating experience of working with Lavoisier? Yet an important similarity lay in the fact that a private group was carrying out pioneering research which, after full discussion, would be presented to the Academy of Sciences.70 Berthollet and Laplace as the two senior scientists, with the prospect of their most creative period being behind them, set out to encourage selected young men in scientific research. They would help them to take up a scientific career with the educational prospects newly available in the scientific institutions established since the Revolution.
The Society of Arcueil really goes back to 1801, when Berthollet bought a country house in the village of Arcueil, a few kilometres to the south of Paris. Berthollet was to convert his house into a research centre,71 with a good library, a chemistry laboratory and a useful collection of physical instruments. These facilities, as well as the benevolent patronage of Berthollet, were to attract a number of exceptionally able young men trained in science.
Already in 1801 Gay-Lussac had become Berthollet’s research assistant. The older man is said to have explained, ‘I would like in scientific matters to be like a father to you’.72 Having graduated from the Ecole polytechnique in 1800, Gay-Lussac had received an excellent foundation in the physical sciences. By 1802 he was able to publish an authoritative study of the thermal expansion of gases,73 most generally known, somewhat confusingly, as Charles’s law. In 1804 he collaborated with another young graduate from the Polytechnique, Biot, in a balloon ascent74 and in 1805 with Humboldt in a study of the atmosphere.75 Although Laplace (the patron of Biot) did not buy a house at Arcueil until 1806, he had already made use of Gay-Lussac’s experimental talents to confirm his mathematical analysis of capillarity, published in 1805.76
We see here the gradual build-up of a group which was soon to justify the formal title of ‘Society of Arcueil’, because of its regular scientific meetings in Berthollet’s house. Thenard, originally a protege of Fourcroy, was soon to join the group and engage in a fruitful collaboration with Gay-Lussac. The physics contribution of the group, originally represented by Laplace and Biot, was soon reinforced by the arrival of Malus and Arago, and later by Poisson. Laplace was helped particularly by Biot and Malus to develop his theory of short-range forces, which he hoped to apply eventually to chemical reactions.
There can be little doubt that the Society of Arcueil constituted one of the first, if not the very first, full research school,77 even if it did not endure beyond the reign of Napoleon. Its leadership was clearly shared between Berthollet and Laplace. It is worth reflecting on how the Society met the remaining criteria listed at the beginning of this article. Certainly the alliance of chemistry with physics fitted in well with Lavoisier’s ideas. Gay- Lussac’s study of the solubility of salts was a direct development of Lavoisier’s work.78 The most explicit research programme related to short-range forces but there was also special concern for gases. One of Lavoisier’s innovations was to include gases as a fundamental part of his new chemistry. Gay-Lussac then proceeded to establish the basic quantitative laws of gases. Davy’s spectacular isolation of potassium and sodium could not have been ignored in France and it was taken up by Gay-Lussac and Thenard. A pragmatic and opportunistic approach to research by some younger members of the group complemented the ideology of the leaders.
Arcueil provided a wonderful location for experimental research, when laboratories in Paris were few. There were also many opportunities for unlimited discussion in an informal atmosphere. Publication in the first few years was in existing journals, especially the Annales de chimie, but from 1807 the Society was able to publish its own journal. Finally the demonstrable benefit of membership was success in election to membership of the prestigious First Class of the Institute. We witness the successive election of Biot (1803), Gay-Lussac (1806), Arago (1809), Thenard (1810) and Malus (1810)-all young men who could not have expected to be elected until middle age without the powerful patronage of Berthollet and Laplace. Membership of the Institute, though carrying no more than a nominal salary, was the key to academic advancement.79
There were also opportunities in applied science. Lavoisier himself had accepted an appointment in the Gunpowder and Saltpetre Administration, which had provided him with laboratory space at the Paris Arsenal. Government concern for munitions continued in the Restoration and, in 1818, under a new administration, it was Gay- Lussac who was appointed to a corresponding position in the Arsenal. Although the laboratory had declined, due to Revolutionary confiscations,80 it was perhaps fitting that the leading younger member of the Arcueil group should follow in this way in Lavoisier’s footsteps. As a teacher Gay-Lussac performed well in the lecture theatre but, with one or two exceptions, he never came close to his students. He therefore never had anything like a research school, but he more than made up for this by taking young Liebig under his wing and into his laboratory.
Analysis of organic compounds: Gay-Lussac and Liebig
It is generally accepted that one of Lavoisier’s main roles in the ‘chemical revolution’ was to give a boost to inorganic chemistry by drawing up a provisional list of simple substances or elements. Although this is true, it tends to obscure the significance of his identification of a few basic elements (carbon and usually hydrogen and oxygen, with nitrogen in the case of animal substances) as the characteristic constituents of organic compounds. From this qualitative discovery he went on to lay the foundations of the quantitative analysis of organic compounds in terms of his elements. After several centuries of chemical analysis in terms of such principles as earth, water, spirit, salt and oil, his work provided ‘ the historical starting point for that mode of elementary analysis around which the field of organic chemistry eventually emerged’.81
Previous analyses had usually been by distillation o\r solvent extraction,82 whereas Lavoisier’s new method was based on oxidation and the manipulation of gases. For some chemists the new elements represented an unacceptable level of abstraction. Jonathan Simon has pointed out that it involved a major break with the traditions of pharmacy,83 where the main concern with vegetable substances might be with leaves, juices and roots in order to extract substances of medical use.
Lavoisier might have had claims to be the founder of the new (now classical) method of organic analysis by oxidation, a method which received greater sophistication in the work of Gay-Lussac and Thenard and, subsequently, Liebig.84 Lavoisier approached the subject of quantitative analysis in a roundabout way. Although the historian can see the relevance of this study to organic analysis, Lavoisier seems most interested at an early stage in using the combustion of spirit of wine to confirm his discovery of the composition of water.85 F. L. Holmes, who has studied Lavoisier’s laboratory notebooks, has shown how in 1785 he became interested in using the combustion of spirit of wine to determine its quantitative composition. He devised a closed system of two interconnected bell jars, in one of which a spirit-of-wine lamp burned over mercury in an atmosphere of air, while the other contained oxygen (‘vital air’) to replenish the oxygen supply in the first jar as the lamp burned. This indirect method prevented explosions and enabled him to measure the loss in weight of the alcohol, the carbon dioxide formed (by absorption in alkali) and the volume of oxygen used. From this data he calculated the relative proportions of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. Lavoisier and his associates devised several different pieces of apparatus for combustion analysis which all had in common the estimation of carbon by oxidation to carbon dioxide which in turn was absorbed in bulbs containing caustic soda solution. It is important to appreciate that these experiments were never published,86 although some of the resulting data was incorporated into Lavoisier’s Traite. Thus the method would only have been known to Lavoisier’s closest associates, including Berthollet. In his Traite Lavoisier was hardly encouraging about the possible success of such work, frankly stressing ‘the difficulties inseparable from this kind of experiment. These arc so insurmountable and troublesome that I have not hitherto been able to obtain any rigorous determination of the quantities of the products’.87 He also began the analysis of a few solids, notably sugar, using red oxide of mercury as the oxidizing agent.
In the Society of Arcueil we find Berthollet’s favourite assistant, Gay-Lussac, taking up the analysis of vegetable and animal substances in 1810 in association with Thenard.88 The first method they employed was to use a powerful solid oxidising agent, indeed probably too powerful, since they chose potassium chlorate, a substance actually recommended by Lavoisier.89 The method was dangerous – even with specially strengthened apparatus, took a long time to set up and required considerable skill on the part of the operators. They made the process manageable by dividing the substance into small portions, mixing with potassium chlorate and dropping them individually into a strongly heated tube. From the carbon dioxide evolved the proportion of carbon was calculated. Knowing the weight of the original substance and the amount of oxygen used, the weight of hydrogen was found by subtraction.
They were able to obtain many useful results, including the finding that in substances like sugar and starch (later called carbohydrates), the proportion of hydrogen to oxygen was in the ratio 2:1, as in water. This result may be compared with the comment in Lavoisier’s Traite that ‘sugar … contains the elements proper for composing [water]‘.90 Even more interesting is another remark made in the same book :
By a long train of experiments, made in various ways and often repeated, I ascertained that the proportion in which their ingredients exist in sugar, are nearly eight parts of hydrogen, 64 parts of oxygen, and 28 parts of [carbon], all by weight, forming 100 parts of sugar.91
Lavoisier was happy to give provisional results of his analysis without disclosing the method used to obtain them. One could argue that such details were not to be expected in an elementary treatise.92 Lavoisier himself, when speaking of animal and vegetable compounds, wrote, ‘I shall not, in this place, enlarge much upon the subject, which I mean to treat of very fully in some memoirs I am preparing to lay before the Academy.’93 Again, with his premature death, this was a promise which could only be fulfilled by his successors.
Although Gay-Lussac and Thenard had achieved much, their first method hardly inspired other chemists. There was obviously a strong case for employing a less vigorous oxidizing agent. In his later analyses Gay-Lussac used copper oxide.94 The Swedish chemist Berzelius (who spent a year in Paris in 1818 to 1819 and lived for several months at Arcueil) first carried out his analyses with potassium chlorate diluted with sodium chloride.95 But, following Gay-Lussac, he carried out his later organic analyses using copper oxide as the oxidizing agent.96
Yet it is the name of Justus Liebig which is most generally attached to this ‘classical’ method. He used a small coal furnace rather than a weak spirit lamp to carry out the combustion. The water formed was absorbed in a calcium chloride tube before the carbon dioxide was absorbed in a famous arrangement of five potash bulbs symmetrically arranged.97 This apparatus was not only used continuously and successfully in Liebig’s own research but also by his numerous research students, for whom basic analysis was the introduction to the whole field of organic chemistry.
Some justification must be offered for the decision to include the German Liebig in a paper on French chemistry. In the first place the decision of the young Liebig in 1822 to go to Paris to study the French approach to chemistry was undoubtedly the most important step in his professional life. Liebig himself had harsh things to say later about the spirit of Naturphilosophie so prominent in German science in his youth and to which he had previously been exposed. In Paris he learned the strict experimental approach to the subject, where quantification and precision were emphasized and airy speculation discouraged. Although he learned much from the formal lectures of the professors at the Paris Faculty of Science, Gay- Lussac, Thenard, Biot and Dulong, who all happened to be former members of the Society of Arcueil, even more important was the unique privilege he enjoyed to be taken into Gay-Lussac’s laboratory at the Arsenal. He collaborated with the master in research on fulminates, resulting in a joint publication in the Annales de chimie.98 It was from Gay-Lussac that Liebig learned the techniques of organic analysis using copper oxide as the oxidizing agent.
Alan Rocke writes that ‘Liebig … can be seen to have been far more oriented towards France and the French than has hitherto been appreciated.’99 Rocke goes on to suggest that for some time after his return to Germany
Liebig must have regarded himself almost as a non-resident member of the Parisian chemical community. He spoke fluent French, corresponded regularly with Gay-Lussac and other Parisians in their own language … and regarded the Annales de chimie, rather than any of the German journals, as his first outlet for publications.
Holmes has suggested that even after his return to Germany Liebig ‘remained, in a sense, a student of the senior French chemist’.100 Most important of all, perhaps, is the judgement of Liebig’s student, A. W. Hofmann: ‘ It was in Gay-Lussac’s laboratory that Liebig conceived the idea of founding in Germany a chemical school, where he hoped to be to his younger fellow-workers what Gay-Lussac had been to him.’101 Finally Owen Hannaway has suggested that the Society of Arcueil may well have acted as a model for Liebig’s own research school.102
Although much has been made of nationalist rivalry between Liebig and his French contemporary J. B. Dumas,103 this did not prevent Liebig making a friendly visit to Paris in 1837 and agreeing to make a joint statement about organic chemistry with Dumas.104 In 1840 Liebig dedicated his Traite de chimie organique, published in Paris, to his former teacher and in 1867, on the occasion of an international meeting of chemists, he again paid tribute to Gay- Lussac.105 Thus in many ways Liebig’s work can be seen as an extension of French chemistry.
Dumas
Jean-Baptiste Dumas, born in 1800 in the Gard department in the south of France, first studied pharmacy in Geneva before taking up a career in chemistry. Although the first chemistry text he studied was Lavoisier’s Traite, he claimed later to have been particularly influenced by Berthollet’s Essai de statique chimique,106 which he studied over a period of several years. He said, ‘Through that work, Berthollet trained me for the study of chemistry.’ In a letter to his relative, J. E. Berard, on 26 February 1822 he spoke of his hope of coming to Paris, if possible, to work as an assistant in the laboratory of either Berthollet or Gay-Lussac.107 His departure for Paris on 1 January 1823 was the greatest landmark in his career. Although his previous wide scientific interests had included physiology and botany, the offer of a post as repetiteur in chemistry attached to Robiquet’s course at the Athenee Royal de Paris108 marked the beginning of his chemical career, reinforced by an offer in 1824 of a post as repetiteur in chemistry at the Ecole polytechnique. It has been shown how, at the beginning of his chemical career in Paris, Dumas was helped successively by nearly all the leading figures of the Arcueil circle.109 In 1826 he married into the wealthy \Brongniart family and took up residence at the Museum d’histoire naturelle. He was later to become both doctor of science and doctor of medicine and to hold chairs of chemistry both at the Paris Faculty of Science and at the Faculty of Medicine. From 1832 to 1838, while Dumas was still at the Ecole polytechnique, he set up a private laboratory in an annexe to the school and it was here that he regularly invited promising students – the beginning of his research school.
A detailed study of Dumas’s research school has been published by Leo Klosterman,110 so only the briefest summary is needed here. In the period of more than forty years which had elapsed since Lavoisier’s death, organic chemistry had greatly expanded and research problems were now very different. In 1839 Pelouze complained that Dumas was using the theory of substitution to raise himself to the position of Chef de l’ecole of the new organic chemistry. Dumas made use of the latest techniques of organic analysis as developed by liebig from the work of Gay-Lussac. In the previous year he had set up a private laboratory in the rue Cuvier. By this time he was known to hundreds of young students as a brilliant lecturer, and a few of the most able and committed were able to work in his laboratory without charge. Already a member of the Academy of Sciences, Dumas not only had access (through Thenard) to the appointments system for higher education but also to the Annales de chimie, where his successful students could publish their research, invariably expressing their thanks to their master (maitre). A list of Dumas’s research students, both French and foreign, is given by Klosterman. Among the better known were Gerhardt, Laurent and Wurtz.
In the joint paper in 1837 with Liebig,111 which began with a glowing tribute to Lavoisier and ended with a description of the respective research schools of the authors, there is a very revealing passage. After outlining an ambitious programme of research in organic chemistry, Dumas wrote,
Despite our enthusiasm for work … we would have judged it necessary to make major cut-backs in the general plan we have just described if we had not taken the trouble a long time ago to train collaborators, whose zeal has lived up to our expectations. We have each opened our laboratory to many young men, who are motivated by a true love of science; they have been able to see everything and know everything.112 We have worked under their eyes and we have made them work under ours in such a way that we have surrounded ourselves with young people eager to emulate us. They are the future hope of science, whose work will be added to ours, may even be confounded with ours, because it will have been conceived in the same spirit and executed by the same means.113
Several points may be noted, including not only the recruitment of junior workers but the intense communal spirit. If we were to believe this literally, the supervision was reciprocal and it might not be possible later to identify the author of a particular idea or experiment.114 This reminds us of what Fourcroy had said about the Lavoisier school115 and what Lavoisier had said about communal authorship.116 There is a surprising similarity between attitudes to collaboration in French chemistry before 1800 and after 1800.
Whereas most of Dumas’s students would have looked no further than to their immediate patron to express their gratitude, Dumas saw himself as a member of an important French chemical tradition reaching back to Lavoisier. Yet it was only in 1836, immediately after the death of Madame Lavoisier in February of that year, that he felt free to express his feelings that his famous predecessor had been shamefully neglected by the chemical community. All had benefited by his legacy. In May Dumas used a series of lectures at the College de France to speak of the injustice that had been done to the memory of his countryman, whom he presented almost as a martyr. The master had sacrificed his life for his science, and the very least Dumas could do was to commemorate him by organizing the publication of his complete works as a sort of bible of chemistry.117 He approached the Minister of Education to ask for funding for the publication of the complete works of Lavoisier and this was eventually granted. It was not until 1864 that the publication of the first volume was achieved and the outstanding five volumes appeared over the remaining years of the nineteenth century.
Wurtz: French and German chemistry
The leading French chemist Adolphe Wurtz (1817-84) had the privilege of being successively the student of Liebig and of Dumas. In due course he was able to set up his own influential research school.118 His students came from many different countries and included Friedel, Grimaux (the later biographer of Lavoisier) and Le Bel, as well as Butlerov and Beilstein. However, it is his interpretation of the history of chemistry which is our main concern here.
Probably the most memorable and contentious sentence ever written by Wurtz was the claim that chemistry was essentially a French science. It had been founded by Lavoisier: ‘La chimie est une science francaise; elle fut constituee par Lavoisier d’imortelle memoire.!119 The claim, made in 1868, or at least the first part of it, has seemed to very many people to be extraordinarily chauvinistic.120 It is generally accepted that chemistry is an international science. It is true that, in different periods, the nationals of certain countries have seemed particularly prominent in their contributions but this hardly justifies an extreme nationalist position. What was particularly striking at the time was that, if any country was to be singled out for recent progress in chemistry, Germany (or the German states before