Lespieau, Robert

Lespieau, Robert. "Poids moleculaires et formules developees." JP (1901) 8 pp. 

The Paris school included Robert Lespieau (18641947), Georges Dupont (18841958), Charles Prevost (18991983), and Albert Kirrmann (19001974). Principal figures in the London-Manchester school were Arthur Lapworth (18721941), Thomas Martin Lowry (18741936), Robert Robinson (18861975), Jocelyn Thorpe (18721940), and Christopher Ingold (18931970). A broadly defined German research school pursuing ionic and electronic theories of reaction mechanisms in organic chemistry does not enter into this history, because it did not exist. 

Robert Lespieau, "Sur les notations chimiques," Revue duMois 16 (1913) 257278, on 259. Also, on Deville and Berthelot, see Mary Jo Nye, "Berthelof s Anti-Atomism A Matter of Taste " Annals of Science 38 (1981) 585590. 

Although Robert Lespieau became best known in France for a laboratory school that focused on reaction mechanisms in organic chemistry, he first gained international attention in another area. Van tHoff spoke at the third Congress of Dutch Scientists and Doctors, in Utrecht in 1891, on recent accomplishments in physical chemistry, putting the young Lespieau in very good company. 

Van t Hoff here referred to a lecture in which the twenty-six-year-old Lespieau had introduced the new physical chemistry of van t Hoff, Ostwald, and Arrhenius to colleagues in Friedel s Sorbonne laboratory. Among other things, Lespieau dealt in his paper with a problem posed by van t Hoff having to do with the validity of neglecting the difference in specific heats of water and ice, and Lespieau demonstrated that the term where this difference figures can be finally eliminated. 13 Who was Robert Lespieau ... 

Robert Lespieau, "Sur la pression osmotique," Conference au Laboratoire Friedel (Paris Carre, 1892) discussed in Robert Lespieau, Notice sur les travaux scientifiques (Paris Gauthier-Villars, 1910). 

See Archives Nationales dossier F17 24392 (Robert Lespieau) C. Raveau, "Robert Lespieau," Ann.AEENS (1949) 2526. Courtesy of ENS Bibliotheque des Lettres. 

Robert Lespieau, "Sur les notations chimique," Revue duMois 16 (1913) 257278. 

See J. R. Partington, A History of Chemistry (New York Macmillan, 1964), IV 800, on Grimaux. And Robert Lespieau, "Poids moleculaires et formules developees," 8-page extract from Journal de Physique (June 1901) 34. 

Robert Lespieau, La molecule chimique (Paris Alcan, 1920) 250. 

Lespieau took pride in the fact that not all his students became chemists. "II ne me gardent pas rancune de leur avoir dit que la chimie peut marcher seule, sans avoir besoin d etre soutenue par sa soeur, la physique." He also commented that some of his students became naturalists and mineralogists, a field in which he also was interested. In Robert Lespieau, "Remise de l epee d academicien a Robert Lespieau. Ecole Normale Superieure 261-1935, Remerciements du recipiendaire." Two-page typescript. Courtesy of ENS Bibliotheque des Lettres. 

Abraham and some practical experience in the physics laboratory first made Prevost take pause. Introduction to the chemistry laboratory completely reoriented Prevost, and when Robert Lespieau examined him for the certificate in chemistry, Prevost was offered a place in the laboratory for doing research for a diploma. 

S. Bourguel becameprofesseur sans chaire at the Sorbonne in 1932, shortly before his untimely death the following year. See Robert Lespieau, "Notice sur les travaux de Maurice Bourguel," Bull.SCF Memoires 53 (1933) 11451153. 

Robert Lespieau s aim to establish a disciplinary specialization of "chemical theories" in France was partially realized in the work of some of his students, especially Dupont, Prevost, and Kirrmann. For the first time, a clearly defined research school in France practiced the art of "theoretical chemistry" in their study of organic structure and reaction mechanisms. They self-consciously employed physical methods and apparatus, and they stayed in contact with a small network of physicists who were teachers, friends of Lespieau, or immediate colleagues. They had a laboratory terrain that was the home meeting place, no matter what their current affiliation. They had a common history that could be traced back generation by generation in the Ecole Normale laboratory to Berthollet, the "father" of chemical mechanics. 

Hardly any French scientists studied abroad. Kirrmann was unusual in his decision to spend a year in Munich in 1930, but he had, after all, been born in German Alsace. John C. Smith notes in his history of Oxford s Dyson Perrins Laboratory, directed by Robert Robinson in the 1920s and 1930s, that there was a great mixture there of ages and nationalities among the twenty or so research students each year but never, until 1947, a French person. 91 This insularity contributed to the closure of the boundaries of the research school associated with Lespieau s laboratory at the Ecole Normale Superieure and to its exclusion from the wider disciplinary history of physical organic chemistry and theoretical chemistry. 

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