Chemistry at University College

On 10 December 2004 the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry, with the assistance of Dr Andrea Sella, held a joint meeting with the Chemistry Department at University College, London, as part of the Department’s commemorations of the centenary of William Ramsay’s Nobel Prize for the discovery of the noble gases.

The first paper entitled “Edward Turner and Atomic Weights” was given by Dr Hasok Chang of the Department of Science and Technology Studies, University College, London. Dr Chang began by providing a brief background to the career of Edward Turner (1798-1837). Turner was the first Professor of Chemistry at University College, London (hereafter UCL) and he made a significant contribution to the debate surrounding Prout’s hypothesis, which stated that all atomic weights were integer multiples of the weight of hydrogen. Although Turner started as an uncritical follower of Thomas Thomson’s advocacy of William Prout, he produced a set of precise atomic-weight measurements that made him renounce Prout’s hypothesis and which contributed significantly to the growing scepticism about the hypothesis in Britain. Dr Chang then traced the development of Turner’s work on atomic weights through his various publications from 1825 to 1834, focusing on changes in subsequent editions of his Elements of Chemistry.

In his paper Dr Chang strongly argued against the temptation to view Turner as a positivist. Instead he considers that Turner was a strong advocate of the atomistic conception of matter and had a growing conviction of the truth of the basic elements of Dalton’s atomic theory. However, Turner did recognise a separation between facts and hypotheses, and regarded many ideas about atoms as unproven hypotheses. Dr Chang concluded by arguing that Turner’s philosophical position regarding atomism was a subtle one and needs to be investigated more carefully. This need for a more nuanced view is probably more general and led Dr Chang to call for a more refined historiography of chemical atomism.

The second paper entitled “Ethereal Chemist” was delivered by Professor Colin Russell of the Open University and Cambridge University. It examined the career of the chemist Alexander Williamson, who died one hundred years ago in 1904. Having received most of his education in France, Williamson entered the University of Heidelberg to study medicine, but was soon attracted to chemistry by the lectures of Leopold Gmelin. Concerned about the perceived lack of opportunities for chemists, Williamson’s father initially opposed his son’s change of career but eventually the son’s persistence gained his father’s approval. Williamson moved to Giessen, where he gained a PhD under Justus von Liebig, and subsequently to Paris as a kind of scientific ‘finishing school’ from 1846 to 1849. He took lessons in mathematics from the famous philosopher Auguste Comte, and in addition to meeting many distinguished French chemists, he was introduced to Thomas Graham, Professor of General Chemistry at UCL. Graham’s colleague George Fownes had recently died and Williamson was invited to apply for the vacant Chair of Practical Chemistry. Williamson’s application was successful and he was elected to the post in 1849.

Although Williamson’s first experiences at University College were mixed, the initial research that he performed there made a major contribution to chemistry. Williamson decided to explore the similarities between organic compounds by taking a simple alcohol to make a higher one. He treated ethanol with sodium and was able to replace one of the six hydrogen atoms believed to be present by one of sodium. By treating this sodium ethoxide with iodoethane he hoped to obtain a higher alcohol. Instead he found that he had produced ordinary ether. This new method of etherification became a standard reaction for the organic chemist and crucially it cast new light on matters of chemical constitution. Although a definite idea of structure lay in the future, it was becoming clear that it was possible to know the empirical formula of a compound. Professor Russell continued by explaining the importance of Williamson’s discovery for organic chemistry and how it challenged the philosophical ideas that he had learned in Paris. He also summarised Williamson’s life and work at UCL, drawing particular attention to his work with Japanese students and his controversial nature. When Williamson died in 1904 he left behind a legacy that remains with us today. He is remembered above all as a chemist associated with a single group of compounds, the ethers, and one whose philosophical training enabled him to argue and communicate as few others have done.

Dr Gerrylynn Roberts of the Open University gave the third paper entitled “UCL Chemistry Students and the British Chemical Community, 1887 to 1956”. Dr Roberts began her paper by drawing attention to a quote that appeared in the Pharmaceutical Times in 1846 which stated how science was destined to have much higher importance for mankind than it had previously attained. At this time there were two new teaching laboratories in London at the Royal College of Chemistry on Oxford Street and the Birkbeck Laboratory in Gower Street. These London institutions were introducing a new chemical pedagogy and the growth occurring in the subject at this time provides a contrast to the current closures of chemistry departments in the UK. Dr Roberts then focussed her paper on the teaching of chemistry at UCL. Teaching here was underlined by the importance of a broad general study of scientific principles in preparation for work in industry. William Ramsay, Professor of General and Inorganic Chemistry at UCL from 1887 to 1913, was a major exponent of this approach, with his career demonstrating the wide range of technical and manufacturing applications for chemistry. However, financial motivations frequently lay behind his various industrial consulting activities, as it was not until 1902 that Ramsay was freed from paying research and staff expenses out of the laboratory and lecture fees that he received.

Dr Roberts continued her paper with a quantitative study of the students pursuing chemistry at UCL, comparing them with the British chemical community in the period 1887 to 1956. Her work is part of a wider project at the Open University which uses a collective biographical approach to investigate the social history of chemistry in Britain between the 1870s and 1970s. Details of about 9,000 chemists are being collected and entered on a computer database, with currently about 4,100 records available online at www.open5.ac.uk/Arts/chemists. Dr Roberts explained how chemists included in the database have been carefully chosen either as representative samples of the membership of the principal British chemical institutions, the Chemical Society, the Institute of Chemistry and the Society for Chemical Industry, or as graduates in chemistry from UCL. Data from the project was used to demonstrate changes in the nature of chemical employment, with the increasing significance of industrial careers compared to independent consulting and the importance of overseas employment for chemists highlighted. Particular attention was given to UCL chemists, with trends in the numbers of students, the qualification level obtained and career type related to changes in the format of UCL chemistry teaching and the heads of the department during the period in question, William Ramsay, Frederick Donnan and Christopher Ingold.

The fourth paper was given by Yoshiyuki Kikuchi of the Open University and was entitled “The Impact of Chemical Education at University College London on Japanese Chemistry, Education and Industry”. This topic can be considered as an example of intercultural relations between the East and West in the history of science and has been a focus for research in Japan and other non-European countries where the Western impact was significant such as China and India. Historians of science have commonly asked the following question: do these relations comprise the ‘transfer’ or ‘spread’ of Western science in the literal sense or are they a process of interaction between Western science and indigenous cultures and societies? By adopting a similar approach, Mr Kikuchi elucidated how and to what extent UCL’s model of chemical education was transferred to Japan and whether it underwent a process of ‘acculturation’.

Most of the major events with which historians usually associate the transfer of British models of chemistry into Japan occurred after the Meiji Restoration in 1868. The introduction of chemical education in Japan by British teachers began in the early 1870s and their students went to Britain to continue their chemical studies shortly afterwards. In the first part of his paper Mr Kikuchi used his prosopographical survey to examine Anglo-Japanese scholarly relations in chemistry. Out of the 71 Japanese students identified as studying chemistry in Britain at this time, a majority (42) were enrolled at UCL. When they returned to Japan they took up positions in various sections of the Meji government as institution builders, engineers and professors.

In the second part of his paper, Mr Kikuchi discussed how Japanese students’ views on science and technology were shaped by their experiences at UCL and the impact of this on the institutionalisation of chemical education in early Meiji Japan. He highlighted the connections, via British merchants, that led Japanese students to study at UCL and examined Alexander Williamson’s role as an advisor and broker, in addition to as a chemistry professor. Mr Kikuchi also identified the UCL chemists Charles Graham (1836-1909) and Frederick Barff (1823-87) as teachers of English to Japanese students in London. Although learning English and receiving laboratory training in chemistry and physics occupied much of the Japanese students’ time, their most enjoyable experiences involved observing Western technology in use, such as occurred on an industrial tour organised by Williamson to the Britannia Ironworks in Bedford in 1865. Mr Kikuchi used this event to argue that the interaction between UCL chemical education and the Japanese students was not one-sided. In 1866 Williamson began to organise similar tours to chemical works for UCL chemistry students, indicating that some kind of cultural exchange between the East and West emerged from Japanese students’ encounter with UCL’s chemical education.

The final paper “Ramsay: The Man, the Myth and the Bicycle” was delivered by Professor Alwyn Davies of University College, London. Professor Davies explained the work which led William Ramsay to receive the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1904 for discovering a new group of the periodic table, the noble gases. Ramsay’s work built on experiments made by John Strutt, the third Lord Rayleigh, that replicated work carried out by the chemist Henry Cavendish in 1785. However it is difficult to determine the relationship between Rayleigh and Ramsay. They corresponded with each other but were both reluctant to publish their work. At the British Association meeting at Oxford in 1894 Rayleigh gave a verbal report about the new gas that had been isolated, but it was not until January 1895 that Ramsay read a paper on argon to the Royal Society and displayed a sealed tube of the gas. Ramsay was now on the trail of isolating more elements from the new group of the periodic table. However Rayleigh was no longer involved as his interests as a physicist lay elsewhere. By March 1895 Ramsay had discovered helium as a gas produced by the mineral cleveite and in 1898 he and Morris Travers (1872-1961) examined the least volatile portion of the newly available liquid air, in which they found krypton, neon and xenon.

In a brief aside Professor Davies explained the significance of the bicycle to the paper’s title. Ramsay used this method of transport to travel between his home at 12 Arundel Gardens and UCL, a journey which he recorded as taking 18 minutes. Ramsay’s choice of transport reflected his personality, with Frederick Donnan famously commenting that ‘what an ordinary, very active man would do on a Monday, Sir William Ramsay did on a Saturday afternoon’. Professor Davies highlighted the significance of Ramsay’s work for chemistry at UCL. This not only included his research achievements but also the chemists that he produced: twenty-eight professors, thirteen Fellows of the Royal Society and three Nobel Prize winners all benefited from Ramsay’s expertise. The Nobel Prize winners included Frederick Soddy who worked with Ramsay at UCL on radium emanation and together they obtained another gas, radon. This discovery completed the new group of the periodic table and underlined Ramsay’s status as a great experimenter who could design new apparatus to further the course of chemical knowledge.

As part of the commemorations of Ramsay’s Nobel Prize various artefacts such as his Nobel Prize Medal and Citation, in addition to apparatus constructed by him for his work on the noble gases were on display in the lecture theatre. At the end of Professor Davies’ lecture, the audience moved to the Slade School of Art (the former site of the UCL chemistry laboratories) where a Royal Society of Chemistry Historic Chemical Landmark Plaque was unveiled by UCL Provost Professor Malcolm Grant.

Anna Simmons