Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
meetings, and included correspondence (sometimes contentious). The
editors sought to build up a community of regular readers, who could
feel that they were part of the great enterprise of advancing knowledge.
They were predominantly, but not exclusively, concerned with chemis-
try: Thomson wrote that “our
Annals
must contain a greater proportion of
Chemistry, which is making a rapid progress, than of those sciences
which are in a great measure stationary” (
Annals of Philosophy,
1 [1813],
p. iv).
They were with others all swallowed up in due course by the increas-
ingly formal
Philosophical Magazine,
as science became more special-
ized and less widely attractive, and the scientific community more self-
conscious
.
In the second half of the century we have William Crookes'
Chemical News
and his
Quarterly Journal of Science,
Norman Lockyer's
Nature,
the
Mechanics' Magazine,
and
Science Gossip,
which despite its
promising title was mostly a sober work of natural history - but chemis-
try was much less prominent in these last four. By 1900 it had become
forbidding rather than accessible. Original papers were in a compressed
style, full of equations, and written for experts. There was no longer
room for the interested experimenter with his portable laboratory to make
a serious contribution fit to appear in print alongside serious researchers'
work.
6.
Professions, Specialization, and Popularizing
That brings us to our third question, for chemistry had become profes-
sionalized and this had a powerful and continuing effect on its popu-
larity. Undergraduate degrees in chemistry were on offer by the middle
years of the nineteenth century, and the Prussian victory over the French
Second Empire in 1870 was seen as a vindication of the German edu-
cational system. It had an effect comparable to the Sputnik of 1957 in
promoting scientific education. In England a Royal Commission headed
by the Duke of Devonshire promoted Scientific Instruction in a series of
reports. Such things can be an excuse for inaction, but in this case they
were acted upon. An unintended consequence was the rise of what have
been called 'two cultures', scientific and humanistic, poorly communica-
