Manchester School

The University of Manchester School of Chemistry Oxford Road M13 9PL Manchester United Kingdom... 

For their equally gracious aid in my research on the London-Manchester School, I express appreciation to Jennifer Seddon Curtis, Joe Marsh, and Rajkumari Williamson at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology and to Stella Butler of the Manchester Museum of Science and Industry. I am grateful to Mrs. C. J. Anderson at the Library of University College, London to Jeanne Pingree and Mrs. M. Felton at the Archives of... 

In chapters 6 through 8,1 concentrate in considerable detail on two research schools that sought to unify organic chemistry and physical chemistry with theoretical foundations built on the ion and electron theory. These schools are loosely designated the "Paris" and the "London-Manchester" schools, where "school" connotes a network of personal and professional associations over several generations at the Ecole Normale Superieure, in the first case, and at London University and the University of Manchester, in the second case. 

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. 

For the Paris and the London-Manchester schools, the local culture, educational tradition, laboratory research programs, theoretical systems, and personal networks that helped forge a school identity and a disciplinary identity are worked out in some detail. In addition to constructing an account of a new branch of theoretical chemistry, focused on organic reaction mechanisms, these chapters suggest important differences in national traditions within the disciplinary field of physical organic chemistry. 

In the conclusion, the relationship of disciplines to schools and traditions is discussed, both in the particular instances of the Paris and London-Manchester schools and in the more general history of Continental and Anglo-American science, using elements of the disciplinary identity schema developed at the beginning of the book. I end with an inquiry into the views of mid-twentieth-century theoretical chemists and chemical physicists on the commensurability of their disciplines, the reducibility of chemical explanation to physical principles and laws, and the distinctiveness of chemistry from physics. 

In later chapters, I analyze two broadly defined research schools, one in France and another in England, and their roles in the development of the discipline of a theoretical chemistry distinct from physical chemistry and theoretical physics. One group, which I call the Paris school, established the field of theoretical chemistry at the Ecole Normale Superieure. It was allied with organic chemistry, on the one hand, and physical chemistry, on the other. The second school, which I call the London-Manchester school, similarly combined problems and approaches from organic and physical chemistry but more daringly dabbled in the physics of electron theory and quantum mechanics. Thus, the discipline of theoretical chemistry took different forms in the two national traditions. 

The London-Manchester School of Theoretical Organic Chemistry, 18801930... 

After Robinson s departure and contemplating his own retirement, Lapworth concentrated on maintaining the prestige and contributions of the Manchester school. In 1933, Ian Heilbron was appointed professor of organic chemistry, and in the same year, Michael Polanyi became professor of physical chemistry. 

This is a history, like histories of other disciplinary identities, in which there were old traditions to be overcome, new ideas to promulgate, villains to subdue, and laurels for the victors. Our heroes and heroines set out to create a theoretical chemistry that would resolve the centuries-old challenge of creating a mechanical chemistry, a truly philosophical chemistry, based in principles of matter and motion that were acceptable both to chemistry and to physics. In this, there was considerable success by the mid-1930s, before the development of quantum chemistry, which only confirmed the approach of the London-Manchester school. 

Given the emphasis of earlier chapters in this book, it is crucial to emphasize that the kinds of chemical problems to which the methods of quantum mechanics were extended in the 1930s were first and foremost the ones that earlier had concerned the chemists of the London-Manchester school, as discussed in chapters 7 and 8. Consequently, it was in England as well as in the United States that quantum chemistry first thrived. 

Ingold exemplifies a research leader who combined information and approaches from disparate sources, reformulated questions and answers, and extended his influence widely through personal contacts and the activities of his students and collaborators. Publication was important as a means of exchanging information and exerting influence, but so, too, was personal presence. In contrast to the internationalism of the London-Manchester school, the combined intellectual and physical isolation of members of the Paris school in the 1920s and 1930s demonstrates clearly how isolation can lead to a dead end. 

In addition to the Victoria University of Manchester, there was the Manchester School of Technology, which had been founded in 1824 as the Manchester Mechanics Institute, and which later became the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology. 

The use of organometallic compounds for thermochemical. studies is very attractive, once the experimental difficulties of handling them have been overcome and they have been the subject of a range of systematic investigations by the Manchester school under H. A. Skinner. Two of these investigations lead to values of the heat of formation of m thyl iodide. 

Coombs, R., and HuU, R. (1997), The Wider Research Context of Business Process Analysis, Manchester School of Management, Centre for Research on Organizations, Management and Technical Change, Manchester, UK. 

Sergei Fedotov University of Manchester School of Mathematics Oxford Road Manchester... 

University of Manchester, School of Materials, Material Science Centre, Grosvenor Street, Manchester, UK. E-mail sarah.haigh manchester.ac.uk... 

University of Manchester School of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Science Institute of Research in the Apphed Natural Sciences (Luton)... 

Courtney WA (1998), Preliminary investigations into the mechanical properties and potential applications of a novel shock absorbing liquid, MPhU Thesis, Manchester School of Engineering, University of Manchester. 

---