Research schools London-Manchester

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 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. 

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. 

Following after Williams, Emily Comber Fortey,114 daughter of Henry Fortey, Inspector of Schools (India), was a student at Bristol from 1892, receiving a B.Sc. (London) in 1896. She was awarded a prestigious Science Research Scholarship of the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851, which she used for research at Owens College, Manchester, over the period 1896-1898. Her research, together with that of the Russian chemist Vladimir Markovnikov, showed that the cyclohexane fractions from American, Galician, and Caucasian crude oil deposits were identical. 

One of Orton s students was Alice Emily Smith. Smith was born on 18 June 1871, daughter of Thomas Smith, Commission Agent of Warrenpoint, County Down, Northern Ireland and she was educated at Crescent House School, Bedford.109 She entered University College of North Wales, Bangor, in 1897 and completed a B.Sc. (London) in chemistry in 1901. Smith was awarded an 1851 Scholarship, which she chose to use from 1901 to 1903 at Owens College, Manchester, where she worked with William Perkin, Jr.,110 her research resulting in four substantial papers. 

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