The Development of Modem Chemistry

Aaron J. Ihde. The Development of Modem Chemistry. New York Harper Row, 1964. 

A year later, in 1965, Ihde edited in conjunction with William F. Kieffer Selected Readings in the History of Chemistry, a collection of historical papers reprinted from the Journal of Chemical Education and published by the Division of Chemical Education of the American Chemical Society. During this same period, he also served as Chairman of the ACS Division of History of Chemistry for three years (1962-1964). All of these contributions, but especially The Development of Modem Chemistry, led to his receiving the Dexter Award of the Division of History of Chemistry in 1968. 

The development of modem chemistry in the past thirty years dearly demonstrates that oil and natural gas are the ideal raw materials for the synthesis of most mass-consumption chemicals. In addition to the fact that they have been and still are very widely available, they are formed espedally in the case of oil, of a wide variety of compounds providing access to a multitude of possible hydrocarbon structures. The biological and physicochemical processes that contributed to their formation have furnished, apart from a certain quantity of aromatic hydrocarbons, a large proportion of saturated hydrocarbons (paraffins and naphthenes). In fact, these compounds generally display low reactivity, so that it is not easy to obtain the desired finished products. This is why the production of these derivatives entails a sequence of chemical operations which, in practice, require the combination of the facilities in which they take place within giant petrochemical complexes. 

Ihde, Aaron J. The Development of Modem Chemistry. New York Harper and Row, 1964. This book provides succinct discussions of microanalysis (577-81), early-20th-century biochemistry (643-70), the cathode-ray tube (478-83), and late-19th-century and early-20th-century industrial chemistry (695-724). 

At the beginning of the 19 century the description of matter attained, what one would call today, a scientific basis. Dalton supported the atomic theory with experiments permitting the development of modem chemistry. The book A New System of Chemical Philosophy, describes this new approach. In Fig. 1.1, an excerpt is displayed. Chapters 1 and II give a summary of the contemporary understanding of nature by analyzing heat and mass, the two basic building-blocks of any material. Chapter 1 displays the theory of the caloric as it was generally... 

Ihde AI (1970) The development of modem chemistry. Harper Row, New York... 

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