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J. Phys. Chem. 1996, 100, 12694-12700
A Brief History of Physical Chemistry in the American Chemical Society Paul F. Barbara Department of Chemistry, UniVersity of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455 ReceiVed: April 30, 1996X
This article traces the histories of The Journal of Physical Chemistry and the Division of Physical Chemistry of the American Chemical Society. As we celebrate the centennial of The Journal of Physical Chemistry, physical chemistry is enjoying a period of intense progress on a broad scientific front spanning science and engineering and involving major fundamental and applied advances. The Journal of Physical Chemistry and the symposia arranged by Division of Physical Chemistry are among the most important forums for many of these developments.
Introduction The vitality, originality, and momentum of contemporary physical chemistry are well reflected in The Journal of Physical Chemistry and the Division of Physical Chemistry of the American Chemical Society. Physical chemistry continues to develop new experimental techniques that find immediate and important applications in many disciplines. It continues to build the theoretical foundation of chemistry and to use this foundation to develop computational tools that have important applications throughout science and engineering. It also continues to make major strides on many of the perennial scientific problems in the field. Physical chemists, especially young physical chemists, are leading efforts to apply quantitative theoretical and experimental methods to many of the forefront fields in chemistry, material science, and biology. Undoubtedly, the next 100 years of physical chemistry will be even more exciting than the last. The Journal is one of the premier international archival journals in physical chemistry in terms of impact, coverage, and quality. It will publish ∼20 000 pages of letters, full articles, and feature articles this year, including a large fraction of articles from non-U.S. laboratories. Yet this represents only a few percent of all published pages in physical chemistry and closely related fields. The subject matter in the Journal ranges from studies on isolated atoms to living organisms. It has been said that physical chemistry is such a broad discipline that the most complete definition of physical chemistry should simply be “research that physical chemists undertake”. In fact, this broad definition is not even sufficient since many unprofessed physical chemists publish in this field. Perhaps a better definition of physical chemistry is those topics that are published in The Journal of Physical Chemistry! The intense activity in the field is also quite evident in the activities of the Division of Physical Chemistry, which is one of the oldest and has been one of the most productive within the American Chemical Society. In particular, its scientific program at national ACS meetings is broad, well attended, and interdisciplinary. There are typically hundreds of physical chemistry contributed papers at each national meeting. Total weekly attendance in the Division has approached 1000 people at some recent meetings. Many of the key breakthroughs in physical chemistry are being presented at the Division’s scientific sessions, often before they have been described in any published form. The Division now includes two very active subdivisions: one on theoretical chemistry and one on biophysiX
Abstract published in AdVance ACS Abstracts, July 15, 1996.
S0022-3654(96)01212-9 CCC: $12.00
cal chemistry. The former publishes a newsletter which includes news of future symposia and abstracts of recent past symposia at various meetings. It also administers a number of awards for graduate students and maintains a postdoctoral position clearinghouse. The biophysical subdivision was founded in 1994 to support the growing number of physical chemists who study biological systems. Its symposia are already among the best attended in the Division. The Division maintains a close advisory relationship with the Journal and is a link between the Journal and the membership. It has initiated and organized this Centennial Issue. The Division strongly encourages broad participation in its various activities, especially participation in national meetings. The new World Wide Web page of the Division is an excellent starting point (http://hackberry.chem. niu.edu/PHYS/). The Division and the ACS actively maintain and encourage awards in physical chemistry, including three long-standing awards: the Peter Debye Award in Physical Chemistry, the Irving Langmuir Award in Chemical Physics (joint with the APS), and the Joel Henry Hildebrand Award in Theoretical and Experimental Liquids. Recently, the Division has worked to help establish the ACS Award in Theoretical Chemistry and this year the E. B. Wilson Award in Spectroscopy. Physical chemists are often recipients of other ACS awards such as the Nobel Laureate Signature Award, the Frank H. Field and Joe L. Franklin Award for Outstanding Achievement in Mass Spectroscopy, the ACS Award in Pure Chemistry, and the Francis P. Garvan-John M. Olin Medal. The present vitality of the Journal and Division is in contrast to some less successful periods in their histories. It is informative to trace the development of these institutions. This article emphasizes the history of the Journal and the Division during the late 19th and early and mid 20th centuries. The respective histories of the Journal and the Division are treated in separate sections of this paper. The history of the Journal and the Division naturally reflects the scientific history of the field, which is enormous and beyond the scope of this article. Good references on the early history of physical chemistry can be found elsewhere.1-3 Many of the recent scientific developments are referred to in the scientific articles in the Centennial Issue and in the regularly published feature articles of the Journal. Much of this paper is based on previous history articles and books on these topics, especially the important and interesting work of the historian Servos.1,2,4-8 He has carefully researched and analyzed American physical chemistry during this time period in his book Physical Chemistry from Ostwald to Pauling.2 © 1996 American Chemical Society
A Brief History of Physical Chemistry First a few introductory words are in order. The reader may already be aware that the Journal has a checkered past. In the early days it operated with a flawed editorial policy that tended to strongly favor articles in the areas of interest of its originator and founder, W. D. Bancroft. Ironically, the early difficulties seemed to be echoed in the perception held by some as late as the 1980s, that the Journal, and to a lesser extent the Division and Society, was not a good forum for modern physical chemistry. Fortunately, these attitudes have dissipated. The history of the Journal deals with how the early problems with the Journal came about, how they almost destroyed the Journal, and how they were later resolved due to the individual contributions of many through the decades. The Journal of Physical Chemistry Wilder Dwight Bancroft (1867-1953) founded The Journal of Physical Chemistry in 1896 at the age of 29.1,2,5,6,8 He had just begun his career as a professor of chemistry at Cornell. Bancroft, using his sizable family fortune, established the Journal with the cooperation of his colleague on the Cornell faculty, Joseph E. Trevor. It was the first English language periodical devoted to physical chemistry. Nine years earlier, Bancroft’s teachers in Europe, Ostwald and van’t Hoff, had established the first journal devoted to physical chemistry, the Zeitschrift fuer Physikalische Chemie, Stoechiometrie und Verwandtschaftslehre.2,9 The articles were required to be in German, but the Journal had an international flavor. Many of the Zeitschrift were from outside Germany. Its associate editors were international, including most of the well-known physical chemists of that period: M. Berthelot, H. Le Chatelier, and F. M. Raoult from France, C. M. Goldberg and P. Waage from Norway, D. Mendelleev and N. Mensuchutkin from Russia, W. Ramsay and T. E. Thorpe from Britain, Julius Thomsen from Denmark, and Lothar Meyer and Victor Meyer from Germany.1,2 Bancroft founded the Journal for both personal and scientific motivations. The Journal was in accord with the goals of Cornell’s president Sherman, who wanted to make Cornell a center for research and graduate study. Sherman himself had founded the Philosophical ReView in 1892. In the same period he had encouraged faculty to set up the Sibley Journal of Engineering and the Physical ReView (which is now published as several successful, large journals).1,2,10 Bancroft was an enthusiastic and at times humorously eccentric teacher and colleague. He attracted attention as an eloquent lecturer and devoted much of his efforts to research. He had an international reputation, including many honors. He served as president of the American Chemical Society and the American Electrochemical Society and was a member of the National Academy of Sciences. On the negative side, he could be autocratic and overly outspoken. At times he seemed to purposely antagonize those who could be his most important allies.1,2,5 Bancroft’s research and teaching emphasized qualitative physical chemistry. His early research was on applications of Le Chatelier’s principle and the phase rule. His later research was in the area of colloid chemistry. Bancroft’s mathematical ability and orientation were limited. This apparently influenced his editorial policy in the journal, and he unfortunately discouraged contributions in many physically/theoretically oriented emerging areas of physical chemistry, ranging from applications of quantum mechanics to atomic and molecular structure, X-ray diffraction, spectroscopy, chemical kinetics, and even many areas of solution chemistry. Before World War I, the Journal served as an outlet for Bancroft’s views and his publications and for those of his students and associates. The Journal lacked
J. Phys. Chem., Vol. 100, No. 31, 1996 12695 support from the physical chemistry community as a whole. In fact, it had its significant detractors, including Arthur Amos Noyes, one of the most distinguished physical chemists. Noyes, whose New England background and early career were somewhat similar to Bancroft’s, founded a distinguished school of research in physical chemistry at MIT. After declining the presidency of MIT in 1919, he moved to the Throop Institute of Technology, which later became the California Institute of Technology. He fostered the careers of such great physical chemists as G. N. Lewis, R. C. Tolman, and L. Pauling. All of these chemists held the Journal in some contempt and preferred to publish in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Noyes did not even allow the Journal in his library at Cal Tech.2 During the 1918-1920 period of high inflation and the economic recession of 1921, Bancroft found it increasingly difficult to personally absorb the constant financial deficits of the Journal. He obtained in 1921 a patron for the Journal, i.e. the Chemical Foundation, an independent international funding agency of that period.11 In order to obtain this financial support, it was necessary to obtain formal votes of confidence from the American Chemical Society and the Chemical Society of London. Before that period the Journal was not affiliated with the American Chemical Society, although Bancroft was active in the Society. By 1931, the Chemical Foundation was supplying over $17 000 a year to the Journal.2,8 The end of Bancroft’s editorial control of the Journal came in 1932 as a result of increasing financial pressures and increasing dissatisfaction in the American Chemical Society and the physical chemistry community with his editorial policy and narrow vision of physical chemistry. His termination as editor was brought about by actions of the Chemical Foundation, the ACS, certain American physical chemists, and the newly organized American Institute of Physics; see below. The Chemical Foundation was eager to withdraw their support and to have the journal become a self-supporting enterprise. The ACS was interested in a totally revamped The Journal of Physical Chemistry and was willing to subsidize it if Bancroft stepped down. At the same time a different institution, the American Institute of Physics (AIP), which was the publisher of several major physics journals including the Physical ReView, sought to extend its growing group of journals toward the interface of chemistry and physics. It approached Bancroft and the Chemical Foundation to explore the possibility of accomplishing this goal by broadening and shifting the emphasis of The Journal of Physical Chemistry toward chemical physics. This would also involve bringing The Journal of Physical Chemistry under control of the AIP. In principle, if this plan had been successful, the ACS might have cosponsored the revamped The Journal of Physical Chemistry with the AIP.1,2,8 Bancroft and colleagues in the colloid community were furious and thoroughly rejected the AIP’s offer. They perceived the offer as an attempt to squeeze the chemists (including Bancroft, himself) out of the physical chemistry field. The collapse of these negotiations and various discussions in the community led to two separate results. First, the AIP established an independent, completely new publication, the Journal of Chemical Physics, which appeared first in 1933. Second, the Chemical Foundation withdrew its support of The Journal of Physical Chemistry in 1932, which forced Bancroft to relinquish control of the Journal entirely to the ACS and to resign as editor. The new AIP publication, Journal of Chemical Physics, quickly became a premier international journal in physical chemistry and chemical physics, including in its early volumes articles from the leading researchers of the time in these fields. The new journal even received strong support from the editor
12696 J. Phys. Chem., Vol. 100, No. 31, 1996 TABLE 1: Editors of The Journal of Physical Chemistrya years
editor(s)
1896-1927 1927-1932 1933-1951 1952-1964 1965-1969 1970-1980 1980-present
Wilder D. Bancroft and Joseph E. Trevor Wilder D. Bancroft Samuel C. Lind W. Albert Noyes, Jr. Frederick T. Wall Bryce Crawford Mostafa A. El-Sayed
a Published in 1927 at Cornell University; published 1927-1951 under the auspices of the American Chemical Society, the Faraday Society, and (until 1936) the Chemical Society. In the period 19471950 it carried the name Journal of Physical and Colloid Chemistry. It was acquired by American Chemical Society in 1952.
of the Journal of the American Chemical Society, A. B. Lamb, who agreed to divert those articles submitted to him that seemed more suitable to the Journal of Chemical Physics. The Journal of Physical Chemistry continued to publish after the turmoil of 1932, but with a new editor, Samuel C. Lind, whoes editorial policy was more reasonable than Bancroft’s. From this time on the Journal was essentially under ACS control. The period of Lind’s editorship and the identity and time period of later editors are listed in Table 1. Photographs are shown in Figure 1. The Journal made important improvements in editorial policy and scientific impact in the period from 1933 until today. The increase in prestige of the Journal and the growth in submissions came slowly, however, largely due to the poor reputation that the Journal had developed as a result of the Bancroft era that was described above. Thus, the journal size dropped from over 3000 pages in 1932 to 1254 pages in 1933 when Lind was editor, reflecting the damage done to the Journal’s reputation and competition with the newly founded Journal of Chemical Physics. Nevertheless, some influential papers were published during these years in The Journal of Physical Chemistry. A few examples of important papers from the early years follow: • Kassel, L. S. J. Phys. Chem. 1928, 32, 225. This paper deals with the RRK theory, a breakthrough in the understanding of unimolecular reactions. • Huggins, M. L. J. Phys. Chem. 1922, 26, 601. This paper makes one of the earliest descriptions of the hydrogen bond. • Kolthoff, I. M. J. Phys. Chem. 1930, 34, 1466. Early work on indicator constants were reported in this paper. • Hildebrand, J. J. Phys. Colloid Chem. 1949, 53, 944. During this period of time the Journal was known as the Journal of Physical and Colloid Chemistry. This article is entitled “Seven Liquid Phases in Equilibrium”. • Eyring, H.; Hirschfelder, J. J. Phys. Chem. 1937, 41, 249. This highly influential paper is ambitiously entitled “The Theory of the Liquid State”. These articles have been pointed out by present members of the Division in response to a request in the Division’s newsletter last year.12 Lind was followed as editor by W. A. Noyes, Jr., in 1952. Noyes was editor simultaneously of the Journal and the Journal of the American Chemical Society which he edited starting in 1950.13 During this period the Journal of the American Chemical Society was trying to be a journal of broad coverage in pure chemistry. At times articles were rejected because they were too specialized or had too extensive data and tables. Noyes was able to shift articles from the Journal of the American Chemical Society to The Journal of Physical Chemistry in appropriate cases. This was a contributing factor in increasing the size of the Journal from ∼1000 in 1957 to ∼4500 pages in
Barbara 1964. Noyes also improved the Journal by having it appear 12 months a year rather than nine and by improving the appearance of the Journal with cooperation of the ACS. Noyes also improved the quality and number of referees and editorial advisory committee members, which is essential for maintaining a fair and effective referee system. Noyes’ memoirs of this period offer invaluable insight into the transformation of the Journal and publication in the Society in general.13 It is interesting to see how diverse the ideas on publication were in that period and to what extent Noyes and other influential people set the standards that are still in effect at present. Regarding some attitudes of the 1950s on the refereeing process, Noyes recalled in his memoirs,13 “When it became known that I was to be the next editor of the Journal of the American Chemical Society, several persons wrote to me that I should essentially accept all articles submitted for publication. These people never sat behind an editor’s desk and perused some of the manuscripts which were submitted.” In one specific example of a paper being rejected, Noyes humorously recalled, “... we rejected an article and the author asked what we expected in an article. We replied that either the article should have some new and reliable data or some new significant theoretical ideas. As far as we could tell his article did not meet these requirements. The author replied that he understood our point of view and that he thought his article had been fairly treated.” The quality of the refereeing process of the Journal was well maintained during the editorships of Wall (1965-1969) and Crawford (1970-1980). In addition, the physical appearance of the Journal also improved during this period. While a number of important papers were published in the Journal throughout this period, the prestige of the Journal only improved gradually. The Journal was actually smaller in 1979 than it was in 1963. The Journal has made great strides in the 1980s and 1990s during the editorship of M. A. El-Sayed. From ∼4000 pages per volume in 1980, there will be ∼20 000 pages this year. It has very effectively developed feature articles, letters, and special issues to serve many subfields in the discipline. It has broadened it subject matter to cover all areas of physical chemistry, including the most physical side of chemical physics. Theory and experiment are very well represented. It has a set of diverse Associate (now called Senior) Editors who are leaders in their own research fields. It effectively utilizes its advisory board and the Division to maintain close contact with the community it serves and to broaden its coverage into emerging subfields of physical chemistry. In addition, it has made major technical improvements in printing mathematical equations, color figures, and the use of the electronic publishing for archival material as well as additional color figures. The increase in size of the Journal is partly a result of the large increase in publications in the physical chemistry community in the past decade and half, especially among non-US authors. But, the extraordinary improvement in the Journal is certainly a reflection of the leadership role of its editor, the hard work of its associate editors, and the tremendous efforts on the part of the ACS in Washington, DC, and Columbus to make the staggering growth of the Journal possible. The support of the physical chemistry community itself must also be recognized as a major factor in the Journal’s improvement. Division of Physical Chemistry At the end of the 19th century, American chemists were beginning to identify themselves by field of interest, i.e.,
A Brief History of Physical Chemistry
J. Phys. Chem., Vol. 100, No. 31, 1996 12697
Figure 1. Editors of The Journal of Physical Chemistry. See Table 1 for individual terms as editor. Photographs courtesy of Carl A. Kroch Library, Cornell University (Bancroft); University of Minnesota Archives (Lind and Crawford); Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin (Noyes); University of California at Santa Barbara, Special Collections, University Archives (Wall); and Mostafa A. El-Sayed.
inorganic, organic, analytical, and physical.4,6,14 Attendance at ACS national meetings was relatively small in this time period and only exceeded 1000 after 1916. The movement toward differentiation by specialty area led to the formation of groups outside the ACS, including the American Electrochemical Society (now the Electrochemical Society) in 1902 and the American Society of Biological Chemists in 1906. The ACS was apprehensive over the establishment of these and other organizations. In 1903 the ACS council considered the advisability of forming divisions within the society. Despite opposition at the general meeting in 1904, papers were organized in specialized areas: physical chemistry, agricultural, sanitary, and physiological chemistry, industrial chemistry, inorganic chemistry, and organic chemistry. These developments led to the creation of the division of industrial chemists and chemical engineers in 1908, and in the later part of that year four
additional divisions were authorized. One of these was the Division of Physical and Inorganic Chemistry, a single division. The original division of Physical and Inorganic Chemistry encompassed all areas of physical, inorganic, analytical, and colloid chemistry. The colloid chemists formed their own division in 1927. In 1935 a microchemical section was initiated, and this led to a separate division of analytical and microchemistry which ultimately became the Division of Analytical Chemistry. The inorganic chemists left the Division of Physical Chemistry in 1956. Today the membership of the Division of Physical Chemistry is ∼4000, while the combined membership of all the divisions that were originally spawned by physical chemistry is ∼18 000. Readers who are interested in further information on the history of the Division and physical chemistry in general are referred to previous articles,3,15,16 including Kwirim’s editorial
12698 J. Phys. Chem., Vol. 100, No. 31, 1996
Barbara
TABLE 2: Officers of the Division of Physical Chemistrya year
chairman
1909 1909 1911
C. H. Herty E. C. Franklin H. P. Talbot
1912 1913 1914 1915
W. Lash Miller S. L. Bigelow G. A. Hulett G. A. Hulett (E. P. Schoch pro tem) Irving Langmuir H. P. Talbot S. L. Bigelow W. E. Henderson W. D. Harkins H. N. Holmes S. E. Sheppard R. E. Wilson Graham Edgar Arthur E. Hill H. B. Weiser
1916 1917 1918 1919 1920 1921 1922 1923 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929 1930 1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949 1950 1951 1952
George S. Forbes (George L. Clark pro tem) George L. Clark Victor K. LaMer Ward V. Evans Farrington Daniels H. H. Willard W. A. Noyes, Jr. D. H. Andrews N. H. Furman J. W. Williams H. L. Johnston H. S. Booth George Scatchard G. F. Smith John G. Kirkwood W. C. Fernelius R. E. Gibson Oscar K. Rice Thomas F. Young Thomas F. Young Paul M. Gross Henry Eyring Martin Kilpatrick J. C. Bailar, Jr. Milton Burton Glenn T. Seaborg
secretary-treasurer
year
chairman
secretary-treasurer
W. D. Bancroft S. L. Bigelow S. L. Bigelow (R. C. Tolman pro tem) R. C. Wells R. C. Wells H. N. McCoy H. N. McCoy (S. J. Bates pro tem) James Kendall E. B. Millard W. E. Henderson W. A. Patrick H. N. Holmes S. E. Sheppard R. E. Wilson Edgar Graham H. B. Weiser G. S. Forbes G. L. Clark (F. E. Brown pro tem) Victor K. LaMer
1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1958 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978b 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999
Frank A. Long J. W. Kennedy F. T. Gucker P. W. Selwood J. E. Willard D. P. Stevenson R. I. Burwell, Jr. B. P. Dailey J. D. Hirschfelder R. M. Noyes B. L. Crawford, Jr. P. C. Cross R. A. Marcus R. B. Bernstein H. S. Gutowsky W. Kauzmann B. S. Rabinovitch M. T. Rogers D. W. McCall P. E. Yankwich J. Ross F. Sherry Rowland S. W. Benson B. Weinstock W. E. Falconer R. G. Parr D. W. Setser W. A. Lester, Jr. W. H. Flygare E. F. Hayes C. B. Moore E. R. Davidson J. L. Kinsey H. C. Andersen C. S. Parmenter T. F. George F. F. Crim D. Chandler D. J. Auerback H. F. Schaefer James J. Valentini John Tully Paul F. Barbara Mark A. Ratner George W. Flynnc Ellen B. Stecheld Geraldine Richmonde
Frank T. Gucker, Jr. P. W. Selwood John E. Willard D. C. Grahame D. C. Grahame D. C. Grahame D. C. Grahame M. T. Rogers M. T. Rogers M. T. Rogers M. T. Rogers M. T. Rogers M. T. Rogers M. T. Rogers J. J. Katz J. J. Katz J. J. Katz J. J. Katz J. J. Katz J. J. Katz J. J. Katz J. J. Katz J. J. Katz J. J. Katz A. L. Kwiram A. L. Kwiram A. L. Kwiram A. L. Kwiram A. L. Kwiram A. L. Kwiram A. L. Kwiram A. L. Kwiram A. L. Kwiram A. L. Kwiram E. M. Eyring E. M. Eyring E. M. Eyring E. M. Eyring E. M. Eyring Andrew E. DePristo Andrew E. DePristo Andrew E. DePristo Andrew E. DePristo Andrew E. DePristo
Ward V. Evans Farrington Daniels H. H. Willard W. A. Noyes, Jr. D. H. Andrews N. H. Furman J. W. Williams H. L. Johnston H. S. Booth George Scatchard G. F. Smith Harold C. Urey W. C. Fernelius Ralph E. Gibson Oscar K. Rice Thomas F. Young Paul M. Gross Henry Eyring Henry Eyring Martin Kilpatrick John C. Bailar, Jr. Milton Burton Glenn T. Seaborg Frank A. Long J. W. Kennedy
a Originally the Division of Physical Chemistry was known as The Division of Physical and Inorganic Chemistry until 1957; it encompassed physical as well as inorganic, analytical, and colloid chemistry. Full-fledged divisions on these latter fields were created in 1956, 1935, and 1927 (see text for further details). b In 1978 the Division administration was reorganized to include a chairman, chairman-elect, and vice-chairman. c Present chair-elect. d Present vice-chair. e Present vice-chair-elect.
in the Division's newsletter on the 75th anniversary of the Division in 1983.14 Kwirim made the interesting observation that, in a summary of physical chemistry in 1951 by Audrieth and Daniels,3 quantum mechanics was given very little attention! Another point of interest in the 1951 article of Audrieth and Daniels is the statement “The next advance in mathematical application to physical chemistry will probably lie in the greatly expanded use of calculating machines, differential analyzers, and electronic integrators.” Obviously, physical chemistry has made enormous strides in the past few decades. Among the list of past chairs and secretary-treasurers of the Division (Table 2) are many of the most influential American physical chemists. The success of the Division is a tribute to the contributions of these individuals and other active members of the Division, including the Executive Committee and ACS
alternate counselors. This list includes several Nobel prize winners, authors of influential texts in physical chemistry, and past presidents of the ACS. It is noteworthy that many of these individuals contributed to the Division and the Society during the most active periods of their scientific careers. This is a tradition that has persisted. The Division and the Journal have had strong ties at various times. Bancroft, Crawford, and Noyes were editors of the Journal and officers of the Division, although not necessarily at the same time. The reader will recognize that many of the DPC chairs before 1950 were central figures in the controversial period of the Journal; see above. The controversy boiled over to the business sessions of the DPC, especially in 1932. The historian Servos has written a summary of this meeting of the Division:2 “Daniels (chair 1931) introduced four resolutions at the business session of the Division of Physical and Inorganic Chemistry, all of them directed toward promoting closer
A Brief History of Physical Chemistry ties between chemists and physicists and encouraging subscriptions to the new Journal of Chemical Physics. ‘To these innocent resolutions.’ Daniels wrote, ‘there was violent opposition on the part of many, including some who will (I am sure) subscribe to the new journal and contribute articles to it...Rather than have the resolutions voted down or subjected to a closely divided vote, I withdrew them...’ The resistance that met his resolutions was in marked contrast to the treatment Ross Gortner received when he introduced a motion urging physical chemists to support the Journal of Physical Chemistry with their subscriptions. Gortner’s motions was passed unanimously.” Despite the vocal opposition to the Journal of Chemical Physics at this meeting, most officers of the Division in this period, and soon after, were active supporters of the new journal, including members of its first editorial advisory board and active authors. Its first editor, Harold Urey, was secretary-treasurer of the Division in 1939. In more modern times, the Division and the Journal have worked together closely. For example, Bill Flygare, (chair 1981), Joyce J. Kaufman, and Alvin L. Kwiram (secretarytreasurer 1977-1986) played critical roles in the process which led to the appointment of M. A. El-Sayed as editor and the subsequent involvement of the Division in the improvements of the Journal in the early 1980s.17 Fleming Crim, Chair in 1989, chaired an ad hoc ACS committee that made several useful suggestions for the Journal. Very recently, Don Setser and the present Division officers worked closely with the Journal to organize the Centennial Issue. From the Journal’s side, the editor and a number of its senior editors have been regular attendees at the Division’s executive committee meetings. Few records from the early workings of the Division have survived. One source of information from the workings of the Division in the late 1940s and early 1950s is the personal diary of G. T. Seaborg, (Chair 1952), winner of the 1951 Nobel Prize (with W. E. McMillan) for his work on the chemistry of the transuranium elements and the founder of the actinide concept of heavy element electronic structure. His recollections of this period refer to many of the leading scientists of the period and offer some interesting and at times humorous insights into the Division that are surprisingly relevant today.18 Seaborg’s interest in the Division in the period 1942 through 1947 according to his diary focused on the scientific issues. For example, he found interest in papers on new compounds like uranium hydride which were consistent with his notion that the actinides should be a separate grouping in the periodic table (like the lanthanides). The reader will recall that the Division during that period was still the Division of Physical and Inorganic Chemistry, an ideal forum for Seaborg’s science. Later in 1947 he became more active in the Division and was involved in organizing a symposium. His diary includes the following entry: “I wrote to Professor John C. Bailar, Jr. to inform him that Joseph J. Katz, J. Clark Hindman, and I are exploring the possibility of having a symposium on “The Chemistry of the Transuranium Elements” under the auspices of the Division ... I explained that we had not contacted him formally before since we had to arrange a number of items about declassification, participants, etc. I said that I hope it will be possible to arrange for such a program” Scientific data on the transuranium compounds, e.g. plutonium, were classified by the government at that time due to their use for the first time just a few years early in the Manhattan
J. Phys. Chem., Vol. 100, No. 31, 1996 12699 Project, which produced the atomic bomb. Government classification means that dissemination and publication of the data are rendered illegal by the government. Fortunately, the Division does not have to deal with declassification of science at present. In 1948, Seaborg was first approached by the Division to become involved as an officer, “Milton Burton told me the Executive Committee has chosen me as Secretary Treasurer for the Division for 1950...This means I’ll serve as Chairman Elect in 1951 and Chairman in 1952.” The Division officer position was a three year rotation at that time. It is a tribute to Seaborg’s willingness to serve the society that he apparently accepted this post without a second thought! The present Division officer rotation is four years, involving eight consecutive national ACS meetings and no financial support of any kind. As in the 1950s, the invitation to serve as an officer is generally accepted by those that are nominated. The next entry from Seaborg’s diary is concerned with a dinner meeting of the Division at a national meeting in 1950. Dinner meetings were routine during that period, but later the Division stopped these dinner meetings due to increasing cost. The first dinner meeting of the Division in decades will be held at the national meeting in Orlando in 1996, at which the Journal’s centennial will be recognized. Seaborg’s dinner in 1950 was partly concerned with the national politics of the time. “The dinner meeting of the Division...was attended by about fifty people...The nominating committee had nominated the following officers for the Division: Chairman: Milton Burton; Chairman-Elect: Glenn T. Seaborg; Secretary-Treasurer: Franklin A. Long; Members of the Executive Committee: Joseph O. Hirschfelder and Arthur W. Davidson ...Joel Hildebrand moved that the nominations be accepted and this was seconded from the floor. The slate was elected. We also accepted the new bylaws and then heard Charles C. Price speak on The Scientist and World GoVernment.” The World Government Movement was a popular cause of the time which was based on the idea that nuclear weapons fundamentally changed the relationships among nations. The movement was based on the goal of removing borders between nations and putting the atomic weapons under the control of a central world government. The fact that such a topic was discussed at a physical chemistry dinner shows how popular this subject was among scientists of the period. The world government movement was largely ignored by the politicians of the time. Yet, the tension of the cold war and other factors led to a period of extreme political turmoil and conflict in the US in the early 1950s that ultimately grew into the McCarthyism era of national politics. The persuasiveness of this conflict in the US was so great that it even was a factor in the Division, as evidenced in the following entry in Seaborg’s diary referring to a Divisional business meeting in 1951. “Harry Fisher talked about the International Congress and they now have 600 paper in hand representing 36 countries...With regard to foreign chemists, Burton questioned the means of distinguishing between political backgrounds as one might describe as dangerous or merely objectionable, and Emery pointed out that this is a State Department problem...” The Division in this period also dealt with more mundane matters such as the need for improvement in the lantern slide
12700 J. Phys. Chem., Vol. 100, No. 31, 1996 projectors (the state-of-the-art display device of 1951) in the meeting rooms and, of course, the choice of symposia topics. For example, Seaborg reports that Joe Kennedy had suggested a symposium on “Inorganic Polymers and Their Application” for the Atlantic City ACS meeting in 1952. Ironically, this would be a great topic for a symposium in the Division in 1996. The final quote from Seaborg is concerned with financial support of invited speakers at national ACS meetings, in this case in 1952. “I wrote...to Dr. Alan T. Waterman, Director of National Science Foundation, inviting him to be the afterdinner speaker at the dinner meeting of the Division...I explained that we do not have funds to pay the expenses of our speakers...” Unfortunately, funds are still limited in the Division, and invited speakers continue to pay their own way. By the way, Waterman did speak at the dinner. Conclusions Physical chemistry is enjoying a period of intense scientific progress on many of the fundamental issues of this field. The discipline is also broadly influencing major developments in many other fields including environmental chemistry, chemical synthesis, material science, material chemistry, biophysics, medicine, atomic physics, molecular physics, mechanical engineering, industrial chemistry, inorganic chemistry, organic chemistry, surface science, and analytical, just to name some of the obvious examples. The Journal of Physical Chemistry and the symposia arranged by Division of Physical Chemistry are among the most important forums for many of these developments. This article traced the developments of Journal and the Division through the decades, emphasizing individual contributions to these institutions. As we celebrate the centennial of The Journal of Physical Chemistry, we can look forward to an exciting and important next century of The Journal of Physical Chemistry and Division of Physical Chemistry of the American Chemical Society. Acknowledgment. A number of individuals kindly supplied useful references, reprints, photographs, anecdotes, and leads for this article. We are grateful to Charlie Bertsch, Bob Marks, and Michelle Gandy, the ACS, and many physical chemists in
Barbara academia, including David Chandler, Andy DePristo, Ted Eyring, Joyce Guest, Gordon Hammes, Paul Houston, Irv Klotz, Alvin Kwiram, Don Levy, Charles Parmenter, Bob Parr, and Don Setser. We thank Mostafa A. El-Sayed for his encouragement and patience. Chuck Tomlinson is acknowledged for his tireless organizational efforts and research for this article. The following institutions kindly supplied archival material: Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections (Carl A. Kroch Library, Cornell University), The Chemical Heritage Foundation (Philadelphia, PA), and the ACS Archives. Glenn T. Seaborg generously excerpted his personal diaries from 1942 to 1953 and made them available to us. References and Notes (1) Laidler, K. J. The World of Physical Chemistry; Oxford University Press: Oxford, 1993. (2) Servos, J. W. Physical Chemistry from Ostwald to Pauling; The Making of a Science in America; Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ, 1990. (3) Audrieth, L. F.; Daniels, F. Ind. Eng. Chem. 1951, 43, 269. (4) Browne, C. A. A History of the American Chemical Society; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 1952. (5) Findlay, A. Great Chemists; Interscience: New York, 1961. (6) Skolink, H.; Reese, K. M. A Century of Chemistry; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC. (7) Stout, J. W. Annu. ReV. Phys. Chem. 1986, 37, 1. (8) Servos, J. W. Ph.D. Thesis, Johns Hopkins University, 1979. (9) Davies, M. Z. Phys. Chem. (Munich) 1991, 170, 7. (10) Yagello, V. E. J. Chem. Educ. 1968, 45, 426. (11) The Chemical Foundation was organized to administer royalties received from the licensing of German patents seized during World War I. (12) The following individuals suggested important articles from the early years of the Journal (not all the suggested articles were listed in the paper): Ted Eyring, Don Setser, Don Truhlar, Paul Houston, and Lenore Wiegmann. (13) Noyes, Jr., W. A. J. A Victorian in the 20th Century, Memoires of W. Albert Noyes, Jr.; University of Texas: Austin, TX, 1976. (14) D. W. Setser provided a copy of A. L. Kwiram’s interesting history article in the 75th Anniversary of the Division of Physical Chemistry Newsletter. (15) Bancroft, W. D. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 1926, 48, 89. (16) Caldwell, G. C. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 1892, 14, 331. (17) The period of intense activity in the early 1980s was a natural extension of the major reorganization of the Division’s executive structure and scientific programming efforts in 1977-1978 led by Falconer (chair 1977). (18) Seaborg, G. T. Private comunication (daily Journal excerpts during the 1940s and 1950s).
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