Danish Chemical Society

In his professional capacity, he is a member of the Danish Physical Society, serving as the board member of the Division of Atomic and Molecular Physics from 1980 to 1989, and as Chairman from 1987 to 1989. Jens is a member of The Danish Chemical Society where he was a board member from 1989 to 1992, and served as Chairman of the Division for Theoretical Chemistry from 1981 to 1985. He is also a member of The European Physical Society, The American Physical Society (fellow), and The Danish Natural Science Academy. 

Danish Chemical Society Universitetsparken 5 2100 Kobenhavn 0 Denmark... 

Copenhagen, 1953 Proceedings published separately by the Danish Chemical Society, Copenhagen, 1954. 

Figure 4.1 Number of members in the Danish Chemical Society, 1879-1914. ...

This paper analyses the establishment and early history of the Danish Chemical Society with particular focus on the relationship between the different groups of members. Furthermore, it will discuss how the definition of a chemist in Denmark in the analysed period was influenced by the structure of the Danish Chemical Society and how this affected the balance between pure and applied chemistry, and between the producers and applieants of chemieal knowledge. But before further introduction of the chemieal society, it is necessary to provide some background information on the Danish chemical community around 1880. 

The archival and printed sources do not provide clues as to why the Danish Chemical Society was founded exactly in 1879 and not earlier or later. The establishment may have been motivated by the foundation of similar societies abroad, but nothing certain is known. The establishment first and foremost rested on the personal initiative of the members of the study group mentioned... 

Initiation and Early Years of the Danish Chemical Society " ... 

The only primary source of the history of the Danish Chemical Society in the nineteenth century is Christensen (1902). 

The Danish Chemical Society did not publish its own periodical until the 1920s. Even when the publication began in 1926, it had to rely economically on connections to the chemical industry. In fact, the journal Kemisk Maanedsblad, later Dansk Kemi) could not have been pubUshed without collaboration with the journal Nordisk Handelsblad for kemisk Industri Nordic Trade Paper for Chemical Industry) that appeared six years earlier. The joint venture resulted in a periodical that included both relevant information for the members of the chemical society, such as resumes of lectures presented to the society, and news of relevance to the industry, such as descriptions of advanced laboratory and industrial apparatus and price lists of chemicals. 

In contrast to many other national chemical societies of Europe, the Danish Chemical Society never obtained a permanent residence of its own. For this reason, the society has never established a book collection or library, and the state of affairs of its archival material has also suffered from a lack of permanent location. 

Archive of the Danish Chemical Society (ADCS), box DCS.01,1. Located at the Steno Institute at the University of Aarhus. 

Figure 4.3 Middle pages of banquet menu from the silver jubilee of the Danish Chemical Society in 1904, displaying several of the chemical institutions in Denmark and some of the most prominent chemists at the time. The topmost portrait is that of Sophus Mads Jorgensen, the first president of the society.

I would Kke to suggest two possible reasons for the dominant position of the very small group of university-trained chemists within the society. The first is that the Danish Chemical Society wanted to gain prestige by what appears to be a deliberate choice of profile. The strong emphasis on basic science in the... 

Based on list of members in the arehive of the Danish Chemical Society. The absolute number is given in parentheses. It has not been possible to find information on the educational background for a number of the members. These are thus Usted under Misc./unknown, grouped with a very few that had more than one degree or a degree in agriculture. 

My second suggestion is that the members could have their interest in applied and technical chemistry covered by other societies and therefore wanted and expected to be kept informed of the developments of pure chemistry by being a member of the Danish Chemical Society. With this approach and as most of the polytechnic graduates and pharmacists were consumers rather than producers of pure chemical knowledge, it should not be surprising to find the university graduates in the lead. ... 

If a definition of who the Danish chemists were in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is to be based on the distribution of the membership groups of the Danish Chemical Society, pharmacist or chemical engineer is a very accurate answer. But if one focuses instead on the lecture programme of the society, one gets the image of a group of people with an exclusive interest in the cognitive aspects of pure chemistry. There was, however, no built-in conflict between the two perspectives, as I have demonstrated. 

Throughout the period, the Danish of the Danish Chemical Society meant Copenhagen . Although the society was and is a national society, it was not until the establishment of a second university in Denmark in 1928 that the Danish chemical community really expanded outside the vicinity of the capital. Even today, chemists working at the provincial universities feel neglected by the Danish Chemical Society, which still holds almost all of its meetings in Copenhagen. In fact, the Danish name of the society, Kemisk... 

A number of chemical journals existed even before the chemical societies were founded. Yet most of the professional and scientific associations in the world have considered publication of their own journal a top priority and the chemical societies are not an exception as displayed in Table 15.2 and Figure 15.1. Table 15.2 also provides information on the first year (and last if appropriate) of publication of the societies journals. As analysed further below, in some cases the societies adopted an already existing periodical and the first year of publication thus precedes the founding year of the society. In most cases though, the society began to publish its own journal or journals immediately or within a few years of establishment. In some societies there even was a need to issue more than one journal for various reasons discussed in the proper chapter. A society without a journal was an exception, but it did occur. For instance neither the Austrian Chemical-Physical Society nor the Danish Chemical Society started to publish an in-house journal in the period analysed in this book. 

Danish Chemical Society, see Kemisk Forening Danish Chemistry, see DanskKemi... 

Figure 7. Two figures depicting the bonding and structure of Zeise s salt presented by Chatt and Duncanson at the Symposium on Co-ordination Chemistry, Copenhagen, 1953 (Reproduce with permission from ref. 1. Copyright 1954 The Danish Chemical Society).

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