Nationalism Czech Lands

The author wishes to express her thanks to Dr Robert Rosner, Dr Anita Kildebaek Nielsen and Dr Jifi Jindra for their suggestions and advice, whieh helped in the preparation of this chapter. The role of the Czech National Revival in the scientific developments in the Czech Lands was described in detail in Janko and Strbanova (1988). The book refers to additional literature. 

Tables 15.1 and 15.2 summarize the foundation years of those national chemical societies that are dealt with in this book. The Chemical Society, the first national chemical society, was founded in 1841 in Great Britain, and remained the only one on the scene until the founding of Societe chimique de Paris in 1857. About ten years later almost simultaneously came into being the chemical societies in the Czech Lands, Germany, Russia and Austria. In the first three countries the societies evolved into stable platforms of the national chemical communities existing up to the present in spite of their various transformations in the early deeades. The Austrian chemists, however, had to wait until 1897 for an association covering their needs.

Finally, in some of the chemical societies demarcation was not just an issue of establishing and negotiating boundaries for the chemical community with an emphasis on chemistry as a discipline. It was also a question of creating national scientific identities, as inter alia in Poland and the Czech Lands. In striking contrast, the Russian chemical society deliberately avoided any kind of boundary-work towards the surrounding society because of the pohtical situation in the country. 

Nationalism and the Process of Reception and Appropriation of the Periodic System in Europe and the Czech Lands... 

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