Specialization and ACS Strategy

As the chemical community has doubled and redoubled in size, there has been a steady growth in the range of specialist groups into which disciplinary activity has been channeled. Part of the power and authority of American chemistry as an institution derives from the way in which the American Chemical Society has been able to harness and profit from that growth.  

A committee was charged with considering the need for new chemical publications and the relationship of the ACS to other chemical societies. The following year a subcommittee was formed to look into the publication 

On the proliferation of specialist scientific societies in late-nineteenth century America, see III, Bates, 1965, 85-136. 

Specialist chemical societies have yet to receive adequate historical treatment. On individual societies see, however. III, AACC, 1965 (American Association of Cereal dhemists) III, Burns and Enck, 1977 (American Electrochemical Society) III, Reynolds, 1983 (American Institute of Chemical Engineers) III, Turley, 1953, and III, Rogers, 1961 (American Leather Chemists Association) III, AOCS, 1947 (American Oil (Themists Society) III, Chittenden, 1945 (American Society of Biological Chemists) III, AOAC, 1934 (Association of Official Agricultural Chemists) and III, SCI, 1931, 24-25 (Society of Chemical Industry, American Section). 

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