Quiet revolution chemistry

See Johnson, "Academic Chemistry in Imperial Germany," 500524 Alan J. Rocke, "The Quiet Revolution of... 

Most chemists were more comfortable with speculations about movements of atoms than with flows of aether squirts. In particular, the idea of hydrogen atom mobility was to become a leading theme in late-nineteenth-century organic chemistry, based in the work of Williamson at midcentury. Williamson s investigations of etherification led him to a theory of the water "type" as well as to experimental proof that water is H20, not HO. Williamson clearly expressed the idea of chemical equilibrium as a balance between two sets of molecules in which some atoms or (uncharged) radicals may exist freely for short periods of time.43 In addition to its uncontestable central role in the "quiet revolution" of the 1850s,44 this was a paper that inspired both chemists and physicists to think about the "degree and kind of motion"45 of atoms within the molecule as well as the motion of the molecule as a whole. 

For the later nineteenth-century developments, see Alan J. Rocke, Chemical Atomism, and the same author s The Quiet Revolution Hermann Kolbe and the Science of Organic Chemistry (Berkeley, California University of California Press, 1993). 

For an excellent account of Kolbe s career and changing viewpoints, see Rocke, A. J. The Quiet Revolution. Hermann Kolbe and the Science of Organic Chemistry, University of California Press Berkeley, 1993. 

A. J. Rocke, Chemical atomism in the nineteenth century from Dalton to Cannizzaro, Ohio State University Press, Columbus OH, 1984, chap. 7-9 The Quiet Revolution Hermann Kolbe and the science of organic chemistry. University of California Press, Berkeley CA, 1993, chap. 4. 

The Quiet Revolution Hermann Kolbe and the Science of Organic Chemistry. 

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