Chemical Education in America: Confrontation with the Past
The hicentennial symposium, "Chemistry, Chemical Education and Chemistry Teachers in Early America," on pages 402-422, gives a summary of chemical education during the first fifty years of the American republic and a glimpse of the personalities and careers of some eminent chemistry teachers of that period. The symposium papers show how deeply many of our traditions and customs are rooted in the past; they also let us see how far we have come from our beginnings. Perhaps it will he of interest to supplement these papers with some highlights of chemical education in America a t other points in its 200 vear historv. .. and to include stories of individuals whose personalities and character have set them apart. For convenience. we look a t each fiftv between 1776 . vear . Deriod . and the present. The symposium provides a good overview of the first fifty years. It tells of the disputes hetween the phlogistoniscs and the antiohloaistonists. of medical ~rartitioners turned . chemistry teachers, and of the breadth of interest and the strong personalities uf persons like Henjamin Hush, John Maclean, James Woodhouse and Thomas Cooper. Historians identifv the period hetween 1820and 1870asone of great transition in ~ m e r i c a nchemistry. At the heginning of rhis period, rhemistry consisted of a chaotic collection of badly assembled observations. At its conclusion, rhemistry emcrged as a vigurous, well-;ivstematizedscience. During rhis half century, little advancement of chemical theory occurred in America, but much practical chemistry was develnped, emeciallv in areas such as vulcanization of ruhher. distillation o i n k & products and anesthesia in surgery. During this period of intense development of our natural resources, the teachers of chemistry were, for the most part, of a very practical mind and bent. Among these teachers, Benjamin Silliman of Yale was the most eminent and influential. After his death, Samuel F. B. Morse wrote of him, "The course of science in the United States owes its progress to Professor Silliman more than to any other individual." Daniel Webster, during his tenure as Secretary of State is quoted as having said to Mrs. Silliman, "Madame, if I were as rich as Mr. Astor, I tell you what I would do. I would pay your husband $20,000 to come and sit down by me and teach me, for I do not know anything." Thousands of people, including Presidents, statesmen, judges and all the leading men and women of the day attended Silliman's public lectures which he delivered in various cities. In these, ~ i l l i m a nmade use of interesting experiments, and this, coupled with his natural enthusiasm, animation, and spirited delivery, gave him a reputation unequaled among early American scientists. Althoueh Silliman wrote manv articles and books and n o u r n aoficience, l his contributions founded i h e ~ m e r i c a ~ to science were of less imoortance than his ahilitv to imnart knowledge, to stimulate s'tudents and to convince the pihlic of the value and excitement of chemistry. [See, C. A. Browne, This Journal, 9,696 (1932); W. D. Miles, "American Chemists and Chemical Engineers," ACS, 1976.1 The period 1870-1920 saw the organization and development of the American Chemical Societv, the maturinp and spreading of graduate education in ch&nistry in ~ m ~ r i c a n universities, and the exoansion and intensification of the influence of American chemistry in science, industry, and public welfare at home and abroad. No teacherrepresents chemical education of this period more faithfully than Ira Remsen. [See, F. H. Getman, This Journal, 16,353 (1939).]
editorially speaking In 1876, Remsen accepted the challenge of organizing a chemistry department in the newly-created Johns Hopkins University. His mission was to help make Hopkins a place for discovery and research rather than simply an institution for the transmission of knowledge, as had heen the practice in earlier American universities. Remsen modeled the department after those in German universities, but i t was largely his personality and dedication to the education of students that made his oroeram an overwhelmine success. James F. Norris. a ~ e m s e ~ s t i d e nsaid t , of him, "1t;as clear that the training and ins~irationof future chemists held the hiehest lace in Remsen's mind . . . . He cautioned us against giving up the desire to nush ahead bv continued work. He warned us wainst allowing& present &omplishment;i to he the high spot in our lives. He urged us not to rvalt for a brilliant idea before beginning independent research." Remsen did not do great research, hut he insoired a great many whodid. Tnadd6iun, he founded theArn~;iran ('hemical Journal andedited it until it wasahsorbed by thedACS in 1914. He wrote seven undergraduate texts in a total of28 editions and 15 translations. During its most recent fifty years, American chemical education has all hut burst with expansion and all but decomposed with diversity. Although there are dozens of chemistry teachers alive and active who might symbolize chemical education in America during this period, few have had more powerful influence than Gilbert N. Lewis a t Berkeley. Lewis was the prototype of the modern research chemist in an academic institution. In effect, he set the tone and canons for contemoorarv American academic chemistrv. - . embodying them in what he perceived as his mission, that of developing the strongest possible graduate department. At Berkeley, he brought in a staff of very capable young instructors and organized weekly graduate seminars in which students and staff actively participated. Although he did no classroom teaching, he guided the course of the research seminar in a way that it hecame one of the chief factors in the teachina and oraanization of his department. A areat leader in chemical research, Lewis was always arti\.e in the lahoratory, constantlv tackling new and highly simificant problems. ~ m o these n ~ &ere hisclassic work on the free energies of chemical substances, his octet theory of chemical bonding, and his concepts of acids and bases as electron-pair acceptors and donors. His textbooks, "Thermodynamics and the Free Energy of Chemical Substances," (with Randall), and "Valence and the Structure of Atoms and Molecules" are classics. Lewis was a scientist's scientist, a chemist's chemist. His contributions cannot he overestimated and should not be deorecated. However. his view of academic chemistrv was far more restrictive and discipline-serving than those of earlier eminent American academic chemists. Insofar as this view. exaggerated and made more self-serving, has become thd dominant view of the most prestigious and even the majority of academic chemists today, it forces a confrontation of the past with the present over what chemistty and chemical education should be. The central question in the confrontation is: Will American [academic] chemistry assume the ever-widening rule of soriet\+ interpreter of thematerial world, asenvisaaed - hv- itsearlv pr-actitiokers and teachers, or will it move more and more toward the increasingly restrictiveand isolated role of a corps of super-specialists each annotating a world apart? WTL
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Volume 53. Number 7. July 1976 / 401
