Organic chemistry history

The Layers of Chemical Language II Stabilizing Atoms and Molecules in the Practice of Organic Chemistry," History of Science 30 (1992) 397437. On other issues than atomism, see John H. Brooke,... 

The development of theoretical organic chemistry was intimately entwined with the development of that particular aspect of it concerned with aromatic substitution the history of this twin growth has been authoritatively traced. Only the main developments, particularly as they affect nitration, will be noted here. 

The development of the first effective analgesic drug, opium, was almost certainly adventitious, and occurred in prehistoric times. The use of the dried exudate from slitting the immature capsule of the opium poppy, Papaver somniferum, as an analgesic, sedative and euphoriant, has a long folkloric history. Isolation of the principal active component morphine (1) as a pure crystalline compound represented one of the early landmarks in organic chemistry. 

It is also a time for reflection, for as I have discussed elsewhere (Pure and Applied Chemistry (1997), 69 211-213), the history of the field of physical organic chemistry belongs almost completely in the twentieth century. Thus the seminal recognition of reactive intermediates including carbocations, free... 

Organic Chemistry A Brief Introduction by Robert J. Ouellette, Prentice Hall, New Jersey, 1998, contains a super introduction to the history of DNA and heredity. Stephen Rose s now classic book The Chemistry of Life, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1972, goes into more depth, and includes a good discussion of H-bonds in nature and DNA. The sites http //www.dna50.org.uk/index.asp and http //www.nature.com/ nature/dna50/ have good pictures and links. 

In view of the rapid growth of the organic chemistry of phosphorus since 1939, considerable attention has been paid to nomenclature. It has not always been easy to achieve agreement among workers in different parts of the world as to the most logical, convenient and simple system. It may not be out of place therefore to trace the inner history of some of the changes and developments that have taken place. However, the reader who is interested only in the details of the nomenclature as now accepted should turn at once to p. 25. 

Osiris (1989) and the March 1992 issue of the British Journal for the History of Science 25, no. 84, entitled Organic Chemistry and High Technology, 18501950. 

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. 

The history of chemistry continued to be a component of chemical studies in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. At Manchester, the Final Honors Chemistry Examination for 1905 included sections of inorganic chemistry, organic chemistry, physical chemistry, and the history of chemistry and chemical philosophy, each section three hours long.40... 

Essays on the History of Organic Chemistry (Baton Rouge and London Louisiana State University Press,... 

In the late eighteenth century, Lavoisier not untypically treated organic substances, like tartaric acid, malic acid, and acetic acid, at the conclusion of his treatise on chemistry, without actually organizing the properties of hydrocarbons into a separate section.49 In contrast, in the last volume of his four-volume history of chemistry, Kopp included a separate section on "die Ausbildung der organische Chemie" (1847). Carl Schorlemmer s Rise and Development of Organic Chemistry, published in 1879, was the first history of organic chemistry per se.50... 

In influencing the history and philosophy of science of later decades, Comte s positivist classification created the conviction that the constitution of mathematics and physics was historically prior to chemistry and conceptually more fundamental than chemistry. 4 But the positivist history we often have accepted from Comte is flawed. "Chemistry" as a discipline preceded "physics." In the next two chapters, I will deal with the claim that physics is conceptually a more fundamental science than chemistry and will analyze the characteristic aims and methods of nineteenth-century chemistry, particularly as reinforced through the hegemony of organic chemistry. 

See, e.g., David Knight, "Journals," 99126, in Sources for the History of Science, 16601914 (Cambridge Cambridge University Press, 1975), on 119. On the exponential rise in organic chemistry, see Jeffrey Johnson, "Academic Chemistry in Imperial Germany,"... 

See the discussion of the history of chemical theories in Ferdinand Henrich, Theories of Organic Chemistry, trans. Treat B. Johnson and Dorothy A. Hahn (New York John Wiley, 1922 trans and enlarged from the revised 4th German ed. of 1921) on van t Hoff, 18. 

Lowry praised the 1916 memoir of the American chemist Lewis as a "turning point in the history of chemistry" with its "plausible theory" of the electronic origin of the different types of chemical affinity and a clear differentiation between two kinds of valence, ionic and covalent. It is customary in mineral chemistry, he said, to consider reactions that occur between ions to be instantaneous, without attaching any importance to ionization in organic chemistry, except for the formation of salts from organic acids. 

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. 

An influential textbook in physical organic chemistry by Lapworth s student, William Waters, appeared in 1935 with an introduction by Lowry giving an account of recent developments as Lapworth saw them. 132 But, as Robinson knew, the history of a theory and the history of a discipline in large measure is created by historical introductions and the systems of citations in the most-cited articles and books in a field. 

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