Jakob Tanner

Another possible answer would have involved the adoption of a patent law in the Netherlands, in 1910. But, as Jakob Tanner in this volume shows, a patent law was by no means a necessary condition for stimulating industrial research. 

Jakob Tanner is professor at the Research Institute for Social and Economic History, Zurich University. His doctoral dissertation, at the same university, dealt with the economic and financial history of Switzerland in World War II. He subsequently undertook research at the department of history, Basle University, and lectured at Bern, Fribourg, Basle and Zurich. As a fellow of the Maison des Sciences de THomme and research director at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, he specialized in the history of science. During 1996/97 he was guest professor at Bielefeld. 

On the role of the Swiss state in the emergence of the synthetic dye industry see Straumann, op. cit. (4). A brief account of the results will be found in Busset, Rosenbusch, and Simon eds., op. cit. (10). This book also includes a paper by Jakob Tanner on the interpretation of the patent issue. The involvement in national politics by J.R. Geigy (he was a member of Swiss parliament) are explained by Biirgin, op. cit. (5), p. 74. Haber, op. cit. (2), p. 197 is not sufficiently accurate, though his general introduction to the the patent issue (on p. 

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