Crystallizing Classroom Chemists: From Isolated ... - ACS Publications

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Crystallizing Classroom Chemists: From Isolated Disorder to Organized Interaction in the Teaching of Chemistry1 A History of the Effort To Create a National Chemical Education Organization James J. Bohning Department of Chemistry, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA 18015; [email protected]

When the American Chemical Society’s Division of Chemical Education (DIVCHED) was organized in 1924, the intent was to “bring about closer cooperation between high schools, colleges and industries and thereby unify the efforts of all those interested in chemical education” (1). But the DIVCHED is a relative newcomer to the scene of chemical education in the United States, since chemistry was being taught in this country more than 150 years before the DIVCHED was founded. There were few textbooks or laboratory manuals for those early courses, but the problems of what to teach and how to teach it were just as common then as they are today. Although the history of chemical education in the United States has been previously reviewed (2, 3), the purpose of this paper is to examine those events specifically related to the organization of chemistry teachers into the cohesive group that is now the DIVCHED. In the Beginning The chemical industry in the United States can be traced back to 1635, when John Winthrop, Jr., set up the first chemical laboratory and plant in Boston.2 But it was not until the 1760s that Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania began to include chemistry in their courses on natural philosophy (4) at a time when phlogiston was still the dominant force in chemical thinking. Before the 18th century ended, however, Lavoisier’s new chemistry was being taught in several places, most notably by Samuel Mitchill at Columbia, who immodestly claimed that he “taught the reformed chemistry of the French and unfurled the banner of Lavoisier sooner than any other professor in the United States” (4). This was in spite of the presence of that staunch phlogistonist, Joseph Priestley, who arrived in the United States in 1794, the same year that Mitchill published his “Nomenclature of the New Chemistry” (5), essentially an exposé of Lavoisier’s work in Paris. It was also the year that Lavoisier was executed in the French revolution. Had the DIVCHED existed at this time, Mitchill would surely have arranged a phlogiston symposium, and one can only imagine the lively debates that would have ensued between Mitchill, Priestley, Benjamin Rush, James Woodhouse, Caspar Wistar, and others.3 New Chemistry Prevails But without the DIVCHED, the debate over phlogiston would be waged in the journals. From 1797 to 1815 Mitchill and two others published a journal called The Medical Repository. It was here and in the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society that Priestley defended his phlogistic views, while Mitchill and John Maclean at Princeton 642

University touted the so-called “new chemistry” constructed in France. It was a typical transition in the history of science. A whole generation would have to pass before the views of a younger generation could prevail, both sides arguing that the facts logically supported their case. Priestley was twice as old as Mitchill and Maclean, who had both studied with Joseph Black in England. Maclean had also met Lavoisier in Paris. Quite aware that he had unleashed a revolution in chemistry that would sweep away phlogiston and the remnants of alchemy, Lavoisier dismissed the phlogistinists in 1791, emphasizing that “all the young chemists adopt the theory, and I conclude that the revolution in chemistry has come to pass” (6). Lavoisier’s new chemistry was not a minor adjustment but a radical change, and it posed a major dilemma for teachers of chemistry. Priestley, now living in the United States, continued to support the phlogiston theory until he died in 1804, while some young American professors touted a new doctrine by a chemical revolutionary who had been executed in France for political reasons. Without an organizational structure and few scientific meetings, instructors of chemistry were left mostly on their own, to read the new books and decide for themselves which chemical philosophy was the correct one to follow and explain to their students. Mentors in the Wilderness The development of chemical education in the first part of the nineteenth century relied mostly on a mentoring network. For example, when Benjamin Silliman was appointed to the first chair in chemistry at Yale University in 1802, he made “a pilgrimage immediately after his appointment” to Maclean at Princeton University, where he “obtained a list of books for the prosecution of his studies” (7). Silliman always acknowledged his debt to Maclean, stating that “I regard him as my earliest master in chemistry and Princeton as my first starting-point in that pursuit” (8). Silliman would develop his own school of students at Yale University, and they in turn would move on to further chemical education in the United States, a typical chain-reaction effect (9). At the same time, scientific organizations were organized to operate more at a local level, in spite of such nationalistic titles as the American Philosophical Society (1743, Philadelphia) and The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1780, Boston). Others, such as The Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences (1799), did not intend to be so pretentious. Great Scientific Awakening It wasn’t until the middle of the 19th century, however, that American science emerged from its embryonic state in

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what one historian has called “The Great Scientific Awakening” (10). It was at this time that the Smithsonian Institution was founded, the United States Coast Survey began encompassing all branches of science in its work, and an organization of geologists and naturalists decided to widen their scope of influence to include chemistry and physics and adopt a new name—The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Chemistry was coming of age, and by the end of the 19th century American chemists would begin to shed their subservient ties to their foreign counterparts and begin to stand proudly on their own accomplishments.

The American Chemist When the Chandler brothers began their new journal, The American Chemist, in July of 1870, they promised it would be “devoted to Theoretical, Analytical and Technical Chemistry” with the hope that it would become a “medium of communication for the chemists of the country” (11). Although both held university positions—Charles at Columbia University and William at Lehigh University—neither found much in the subject of chemical education of sufficient importance to be included, except in the very beginning, when Charles turned to his Columbia University colleagues to help fill the pages. In Volume I there is a very brief note on the type of qualitative analysis done at Columbia University (12), and this was given a reprise in the very last volume, when the journal was in its death throes (13). Many pages were devoted to the entire Columbia University qualitative analysis scheme that would be worthy of a latterday Journal of Chemical Education. Perhaps this should not be surprising, since at that time every chemist was expected to have the qualitative analysis skills then so much in demand. Thereafter, the seven volumes of this short-lived enterprise remained true to the editors’ original premise, filled with articles on the analysis of minerals, water, and foods, as well as industrial chemical processes and their improvements. The editors did find time, however, for historical papers that might be of actual value for teachers. Most of these were written by Charles Chandler’s Columbia University colleague, Henry Carrington Bolton. Bolton authored the very first paper in the journal on what he called defunct elements, including the little-known Jargonium (14). The closest the Chandlers ever got to chemical education on a regular basis was in a gossip column hidden under the title of “Brevities” that appeared at the end of every issue. It was there, for example, that one might learn that “Miss Abbie Woodleigh, daughter of Rev. T. A. Woodleigh of East Bennington, VT, has been elected to the Professorship of Chemistry in the Pennsylvania Female College, Pittsburg [sic]” (15) or that poor William Proctor, Jr. of the College of Pharmacy in Philadelphia “died suddenly Monday night after having delivered a lecture to the students” (16). The one notable exception to this lack of coverage of chemical education appeared, not by specific design on the part of the editors, but because they had a practice of including addresses from foreign chemical societies. This included the Faraday Lecture delivered before the Chemical Society of London on May 30, 1872, by Professor Stanislaus Cannizzaro. Under the title “Considerations on Some Points

of the Theoretic Teaching of Chemistry,” Cannizzaro addressed the contemporary problem teachers of chemistry faced about the atomic and molecular theory and how and when it should be included in the chemistry course. Referring to the “art of teaching—an art which is entirely experimental,” Cannizzaro confessed that “after many trials in the course of my teaching, I have come to the conclusion, that not only is it impossible to eliminate the atomic and molecular theory, but moreover, that in order to arrive at this theory, it is not desirable to follow the long and fatiguing road of induction.” Even the well-known Cannizzaro struggled with how to present chemistry in his classroom, finding that without atomic and molecular theory, the laws of multiple proportions and gaseous volumes “do not penetrate sufficiently to the majority of the students” (17). Cannizzaro’s lengthy discourse concluded with these prophetic remarks, as valid today as they were in 1872. “When the attention of the distinguished ... professors here assembled is once directed to this matter, I am sure that a light will be diffused over the question, ... and I have no doubt that young professors will find therein a source of counsel well-adapted to direct their first steps in the teaching of chemistry, at a time when the difficulty of that teaching has been very much increased by the incessant transformations of our science, which go on with a rapidity almost to great too follow” (17). First it was the introduction of Lavoisier’s new chemistry, and now it was the atomic and molecular theory taking center stage. Cannizzaro was making a plea, at least indirectly, for an organization of chemical educators. Without it, young teachers would in their isolation learn from their immediate elders as their only source of counsel. Centennial of Chemistry The Chandlers’ journal is probably the best source of detailed information on the first international meeting of chemists held in the United States (18). Gathering in Northumberland, Pennsylvania, on July 31 and August 1, 1874, some seventy chemists celebrated the Centennial of Chemistry in the town where Joseph Priestley last lived and was buried. The assembly paid tribute to the centennial of Priestley’s discovery of oxygen in 1774, but the emphasis was on a celebration of the centennial of modern chemistry and the contributions Americans had made over the preceding one hundred years. After reviews of theoretical and industrial chemistry, the meeting concluding with an astounding compendium by Benjamin Silliman4 of American contributions to chemistry (19). Beginning with an historical insight of the early days of the 18th century, Silliman also lists several hundred individuals, one name at a time, and the contributions these Americans had made to the development of chemistry. To Silliman, these contributions were reflected in an individual’s research and laboratory work, with one exception. Describing Josiah P. Cooke of Harvard University as an “assiduous and successful laborer...in the field of authorship, teaching and research,” Silliman credited Cooke with being “largely instrumental in changing the older didactic methods of chemical instruction formerly in use, rendering them more exact and searching by a free use of the blackboard in the recitation room and laboratory” (19). This was the only mention of chemical education in the two-day affair.

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Enter the American Chemical Society It should come as no surprise, therefore, that when the American Chemical Society (ACS) was organized in 1876 in New York by Charles Chandler, it would find little room for consideration of matters relating to the teaching of chemistry. In fact, for the first 17 years of its existence, the ACS showed no interest at all. Chemistry teaching is never mentioned in minutes of the Society’s monthly meetings, nor in the pages of its journal. Instead, the Society preferred to deal with the applications of analytical techniques and the burgeoning chemical industry. This was to be expected, however, since it was the golden age of the analytical chemist who could solve the chemical problems of food adulteration, health-related issues, and the geological surveys then being conducted by many states and the federal government. It was also the beginning of the industrial revolution and the coming of a chemical industry that would forever change the American way of life as well as the American landscape. Ironically, this rapid growth in chemistry at the end of the 19th century would foster a tremendous increase in the demand for chemists, and this in turn would bring into view the need for some kind of consensus in the teaching of chemistry. It would soon be time for the isolated centers of chemical education to react with each other. Rival Organizations While the so-called “American” Chemical Society continued to stumble along with poorly attended monthly meetings in New York City supplemented with monthly rendezvous called “Conversaziones”, a new breed of chemists was attending meetings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) to talk about chemical education, among other things. The AAAS had been founded almost thirty years before the ACS and met annually at different cities throughout the country, such as Dubuque, Iowa and Detroit, Michigan (20). Reporting on the 1872 Dubuque AAAS meeting, the Chandlers said there was not much of interests to chemists, but they did mention a paper read by a Professor A. E. Foote of Iowa State Agricultural College “On the value of laboratory work in connection with the teaching of chemistry.” Foote said he would forestall “uninteresting theory with practical experiment in the case of beginners, and make every fact acquired by them a thing they would delight and revel in” (21). Two years later, in 1874, the camaraderie and goodwill found at the Centennial of Chemistry meeting in Pennsylvania led to a proposal to form a national chemical organization. The result was a resounding “No,” led by those who had worked so hard to form a new Section C of the AAAS devoted to chemistry, which was to meet two weeks later in Hartford, Connecticut (22). For many years thereafter, the ACS was frequently ignored as the AAAS became the major focus of rising new stars in the chemical firmament like Frank W. Clarke, Harvey W. Wiley, and Ira Remsen. Even Charles Chandler’s brother, William, preferred traveling from the Lehigh University campus in Pennsylvania to distant places for the annual AAAS meeting rather than go to New York for an ACS meeting. In its early years, the AAAS Section C was quite active, and usually found room for chemical education at their meet644

ings. At the Philadelphia meeting in 1884, Ira Remsen, then in his sixth year at Johns Hopkins University, opened the discussion on educational methods in laboratory practice.5 Complaining that the course of instruction in the colleges was too short and superficial, Remsen warned that lecture demonstrations “should never be done for show because aesthetics and chemistry are entirely distinct.” In the ensuing discussion, professor Wilbur O. Atwater of Wesleyan University predicted that “chemists must show that their science will give what is called ‘liberal culture’ or it will not find a place in our educational institutions” (23). This topic proved so popular that it was continued at the meeting in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1885, when Harvey W. Wiley led a discussion based on the question sent out in advance of the meeting, “What is the best initiatory work for students entering upon laboratory practice?” Wiley, who had just left Purdue University for the Department of Agriculture in Washington, DC,6 opened with statements that were sure to invoke a lively discussion. “Students should be taught to rely upon themselves,” Wiley said, and “their faculties of observation and powers of reason should be developed. At first they should be kept as much as possible from books and from ... garrulous professors.” Albert Prescott of the University of Michigan warned, however, that “a great mistake can be made by relying on laboratory work alone as there was formerly by neglecting it altogether” (24). Even though he had been a stalwart contributor to the AAAS Section C, a frustrated Harvey W. Wiley and his colleague Frank W. Clarke proposed in 1889 a new organization called the Continental Chemical Society (25). Wiley used this threat to persuade Charles Chandler to relinquish his hold on what many conceded was a local organization that unfortunately had claim to the word “American”. Realizing he had no choice, Chandler quickly responded by changing the ACS constitution, opened the possibility of local sections, and held the Society’s first meeting outside of New York City in Rhode Island in 1890. Wiley was subsequently elected the president of the ACS for 1893 and reelected for 1894.7 Columbian Exposition of 1893 An ideal vehicle for moving the revised ACS from its local orientation to one of national and international character was the World’s Columbian Exposition, also known as the Chicago World’s Fair. Convinced that “the crowning glory of the World’s Fair should not just be material achievements and industrial triumphs,” the organizers included some 20 departments and 225 divisions that would celebrate “the enlightened and progressive spirit of the present age.” Wiley seized on this idea to hold a meeting of the World’s Congress of Chemists, thus joining other diverse groups oriented towards woman’s progress, moral and social reform, temperance, agriculture, and the like (26). It was the first time that ACS members participated in a divisional meeting structure. One of those divisions was called “Didactic Chemistry,” and Wiley turned to his old institution, Purdue University, and tapped Winthrop Ellsworth Stone to chair and organize the session. Stone, then thirty-one years old, had only been at Purdue University three years, but eight years later he would become Purdue University’s fifth president.8 Noting that “the teaching of chemistry has ... become a kind of profession with its own peculiar limitations and dis-



appointments as well as its pleasures and aspirations,” Stone argued that American chemistry teachers were not as involved in research as their European counterparts, because of a common complaint—“Too many students. Too many hours of teaching. Too many subjects to be taught” (27). After emphasizing that “the attitude of the teacher of chemistry should be one of interest and active participation in precisely the same degree as he manifests interest in and sympathy with his pupils”, Stone turned to the five speakers he had arranged to participate. The first was Charles Frederic Mabery of Case Institute,9 who discussed “How Chemistry Is Best Taught”. Mabery told the Congress that “the guiding star to successful teaching in chemistry is the personality and enthusiasm of the instructor.” He also noted with some sarcasm that “a faithful teacher does not limit his attention to the brighter minds, citing some wise teacher who once said, ‘I am faithful in my duty to dull students; in my old age I may need favors of the men of wealth’” (28). Following Mabery were George Lunge, from the Federal Polytechnic Schools, Zürich, “The Education of Industrial Chemists” (29); Henry Pemberton, Jr., “The Teaching of Industrial Chemistry in Colleges” (30); R. W. Jones from the University of Mississippi, “Laboratory Work Must be Subordinate and Auxiliary to the Presentation of Facts, Laws and Theories by the Teacher”; and W. A. Noyes from the Rose Polytechnic Institute, “Quantitative Work for Beginners in Chemistry” (31). The paper by Jones, undoubtedly the most controversial, was the only one not published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS). Wiley and Stone had not only succeeded in finally getting chemical education into JACS, they had put it on stage for all the world to see. While all of the Congresses that met in Chicago were meant to explore the more cerebral matters, it would be impossible to overlook the exhibits that drew crowds of more than half a million on most days. Within the 1000 acres of Jackson Park set aside for the Fair was the Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building, a structure more than five football fields-long with forty acres of floor space, which was said to be able to contain the entire Russian Army. Within that building was a section set aside for displays by schools ranging from the National Kindergarten College to Harvard University and Yale University (32). Here was another venue for displaying the growing importance of chemical education in the United States. For example, among Lehigh University’s 500 items were sets of lecture notes from different chemistry courses, bottles filled with organic and inorganic preparations made by students, and a number of student theses (33). Meeting of the Minds At a AAAS Section C meeting in 1877, Frank W. Clarke10 stated succinctly, “No branch of science has done more for civilization than ours. Old industries have been revolutionized, and new ones created; things which were once the luxuries of the few have been made the daily necessities of the many; all arts and all manufactures owe tribute to the chemist. A comparatively small number of men, a majority of them teachers, working only in their intervals of leisure, established the principles which have brought about these wonderful results. If small means, widely scattered and

unsystematically used, have wrought such marvels, imagine what may we not expect from the greater opportunities which a more general comprehension of the value of our labors must eventually bring?” (34). Harvey W. Wiley would reaffirm the need predicted by Clark in Chicago in 1893, telling the international audience of chemists, “We have been whirled hither and thither in the wild molecular melangé of a rapidly growing country” in which newly forming “centers of crystallization” would bring more unity of action. Wiley emphasized that the ACS, as one of these emerging centers, offered “their hand, big, brawny and right honest in its grasp” (26). One of the organizations to get the ACS handshake, as it were, was the AAAS Section C. In 1896 the revitalized ACS had offered to hold one of its two yearly meetings jointly with the AAAS Section C. In spite of this delicate friendship, the ACS continued to ignore chemical education, although it did print reviews of textbooks in JACS. For example, Edward Hart’s review of William A. Tilden’s 1895 text about “Hints on the Teaching of Elementary Chemistry in Schools and Science Classes” quotes Tilden as proclaiming, “In order to cultivate the powers of observation, various branches of natural science have been brought into use in schools, but none seem to present so many advantages as are offered by chemistry when rightly taught” (35). Unlike the ACS, however, the AAAS Section C was never reluctant to allow papers about chemical education on its programs. At the Springfield, Massachusetts meeting in 1895 (36), there was a whole section devoted to chemical education, including “Chemistry as a Liberal Education” by Peter T. Austen and a spirited discussion on important phases of “Didactic Chemistry” led by Thomas H. Norton of the University of Cincinnati. Unlike the ACS, the AAAS Section C was not reluctant to let women be the authors of papers at its annual session. One of the more frequent contributors to Section C was Ellen Henrietta Swallow Richards,11 who as early as 1879 was describing “Household Chemistry” to a AAAS Section C audience (37). When the first joint meeting of ACS and the AAAS Section C was finally held in Buffalo, New York, in December 1896, eleven papers were featured in a special symposium on didactic chemistry. Organized by Norton, the session featured both A. A. Noyes and Ellen Richards among its speakers (38). Two years later, in Boston, Massachusetts, another special symposium on the Teaching of Chemistry was organized by Francis Preston Venable of the University of North Carolina, who began the session with a discussion of some dangers in the teaching of chemistry. Venable cautioned that “so much stress is laid upon...symbols and so much store set upon their manipulation, that the student gathers the impression that he knows and understands much of the science when he can glibly rattle off a few of them, and he devotes much time to memorizing certain of them, which time would far better be spent in an attempt at grasping the great science itself ” (39). Joining Venable on the program were Ira Remsen and Edward Hart, then editor of JACS.12 A New Century Begins When the ACS celebrated its silver anniversary in 1901, their two-day program at the Chemists’ Club in New York


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included chemical education; it was the first time this topic was formally included at an ACS meeting. The Census Committee reported extensive details of all of the institutions in the United States offering degrees in chemistry and the progress that had been made in chemical education since 1876. The committee concluded that their data were “cause for much self-congratulation, and at the same time...make American chemists acknowledge frankly their failings, and to indicate directions for much home missionary work” (40). However, at the beginning of the 20th century, the AAAS Section C still seemed to be the best home for chemical education. At the Denver, Colorado, meeting in 1901 (held jointly with the ACS), the program included seven papers on didactic chemistry, ranging from Wilder D. Bancroft discussing the proper methods of teaching physical chemistry to a presentation on chemistry in the high schools (41). Only the paper by Arthur Lachman of the University of Oregon on “Suggestions for the Improvement of Teaching Chemistry” was published, and that appeared in Science (42), not some ACS publication. The Chairman of Section C for that year was John H. Long, who would become president of the ACS just two years later. His address in Denver focused on the early history and present condition of the teaching of chemistry in the medical schools of the United States. It was a topic dear to his heart, for Long spent his entire career in the medical school at Northwestern University and pioneered the concept that chemistry in medical schools should be taught by chemists, a somewhat novel idea at the time. Long said it was slow in coming, and even in 1901, old methods still persisted in some schools. Long prophetically impressed on his audience that “the fields of physical chemistry and organic chemistry are not the only ones to claim the serious thought of some investigators. I wish to suggest that the chemistry of problems bearing of life itself present no less interesting possibilities... and is worthy of more enthusiastic cultivation in our American schools” (43).13 Meeting in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1902, the AAAS Section C program featured papers that today would be called review papers or background papers. The featured speakers were Ira Remsen and future Nobel laureate T. W. Richards (44). In 1907, Charles Mabery, as Chair of Section C, commented on the “Education of the Professional Chemist”. Noting that the rapid industrial development and its all-pervading commercial spirit was being felt in institutions of learning, Mabery decried the student who “limited his interest to subjects that in his estimation would lead to immediate advancement and profit on his exit from college. Impatient of attainment along the lines of self-improvement and broad culture, the student regards his institution merely as an influence in gaining an initial foothold, satisfied with the minimum requirements that it will accept for his respectable graduation.... It tends to limit the efforts of teachers to a monotonous routine, and the maintenance of acceptable standing of students in this routine” (45). This was also the year that the AAAS continued to expand its organization by establishing Section L on education. Although Section L would address the broader aspects of education, including the psychological, its primary concentration was on the teaching of the different branches of science at all levels (46). For the first time, a national scientific organiza646

tion had established a specific educational focus. Clearly, the AAAS was more attuned to the problems of those toiling in the classroom than the ACS was at that time. About this time, John N. Swan, who would become chair of the DIVCHED many years later, discussed the lack of formal ACS interest in chemical education with Charles H. Herty, then chair of the chemistry department at the University of North Carolina and secretary of the AAAS Section C. Swan claims the question was raised “as to whether or not a teacher received benefit enough from Society meetings to justify the expense of attending.” But Swan admits “that nothing was suggested about founding an organization” and thus bettering conditions (47).14 This was the time when “the average isolated teacher had to work out his own salvation as best he could with the aid of an occasional book agent” (48). ACS Educational Section The breakthrough occurred in 1908, primarily through the efforts of William Paul Talbot of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) (49). A descendant of one of the oldest families in Massachusetts, Talbot received his B.S. degree from MIT and then went to Europe, where he received his Ph.D. degree summa cum laude under Wilhelm Ostwald at Leipzig University. Because of Ostwald’s influence, Talbot introduced physical chemistry into the MIT curriculum when he returned as an assistant professor in 1890. Twelve years later, at the age of thirty-eight, he became chairman of the MIT chemistry department, a position he retained for twenty years. Talbot was no stranger to the plight of the chemical educator. He knew what it was like to pioneer change, as he was one of the first people to introduce physical chemistry into the chemical curriculum. He was also a charter member of the New England Association of College Chemistry Teachers (NEACT), whose founders in 1898 noted how people of “kindred tastes and aims have always sought inspiration in union” (50). Now, in 1907, he was chair of the AAAS Section C and chair of what was called the Section of Chemical Education of the ACS. He was in part responsible for the first joint meeting of the AAAS Section C and the ACS in December 1908, held at the Girls’ Latin School in Baltimore, Maryland. There was a stellar selection of speakers addressing problems in chemical education, including William H. Nichols, Marston D. Bogert (then ACS president), Arthur D. Little, Charles H. Herty, and a very young Gilbert N. Lewis, who was only thirty-three years of age (51, 52). Most of the papers were published in Science, while a few ended up in a new ACS publication, the Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry. Talbot was the principal speaker at this symposium in Baltimore, which was billed as the first meeting sponsored by the Section on Chemical Education of the ACS. “The session”, Talbot said, “indicates an awakening interest in all that pertains to the education of the chemist and chemical engineer.” At the end of his talk on “Science Teaching as a Profession,” Talbot complained that “the increased pressure of the times in which we live, [possibly] the materialistic tendencies of these times or the increased absorption of the science teacher in his speciality, ...seems to operate to diminish the interest on the part of young teachers of science in breadth of culture” (53).



Nevertheless, Talbot admitted that “the crowning joy of the teacher is the joy of helpfulness.... His keenest satisfaction must be...in the consciousness that his efforts have made some dark places obscure.... He must be ‘willing to be forgotten’ and must not expect an expression of gratitude or even of appreciation on the part of the few who take any notice of him which is in any way commensurate with the effort he knows he has put out in their behalf ” (53). In 1909, Talbot turned over the reins of the ACS Section of Chemical Education to an old friend of his from Boston University, Lyman C. Newell (54). Newell founded three chemistry departments and four professional societies, one of which was NEACT. His passion for chemistry outside of the classroom was focused on the history of chemistry, and he would later become the editor of all the historical papers in the early years of the Journal of Chemical Education. At the Boston meeting held in December, again jointly with the AAAS, Newell was given time in general session to address the topic “The Function of Chemistry in College Education”. This gave him and the Section credibility alongside of the other general speakers such as T. W. Richards and Arthur D. Little. Newell’s twelve speakers for the meeting of the Chemical Education Section were mostly devoted to high school chemistry. At the conclusion of their session, a resolution was unanimously adopted that stressed the “sense of the Section that there is an urgent need for the improvement in the conditions under which high school chemistry is taught” (55). In 1910 the joint AAAS Section C and ACS meeting format continued and the Section of Chemical Education reports were listed in the formal proceedings of the Society (56). The meeting was held at the University of Minnesota and presided over by Charles Frederick Burgess, who had pioneered the chemical engineering curriculum at the University of Wisconsin and was the founder of the Burgess Battery Company. Not surprisingly, this session was centered on chemical engineering and included two of the American founders of chemical engineering, William H. Walker and William K. Lewis from MIT. Burgess’ address was titled, “The Efficiency of the College Graduate in the Chemical Industry”. This was also the year when Talbot had the sad duty of writing the obituary of Ellen Swallow Richards for the Society, remarking that she was “always a helpful teacher, whether in her classes at MIT or upon the lecture platform, and with a rare gift of leadership and organization, ...devoted herself unsparingly to the service of others, and more especially to the promotion and advancement of the education of women” (57). The joint format continued one more year when the two groups met in December 1911 at the McKinley High School in Washington, DC. The Section of Chemical Education met jointly with the Division of Physical and Inorganic Chemistry of the ACS, chaired by A. A. Noyes. Not surprisingly, the five papers in this joint session were on the teaching of physical chemistry (58). Missing Years The ACS decided to institute a divisional structure after the 1904 meeting in Pittsburgh, when a large attendance made it obvious that it would be necessary to schedule concurrent sessions to accommodate the expected increases in

both attendees and papers in the future. At first a group could establish what was called a section and schedule programs. After a sufficient but unspecified number of successful meetings were held to prove their necessity, they could apply to the ACS Council for divisional status, which allowed them the right to elect officers, establish bylaws, and collect dues. By 1908, five sections had become divisions (59). The Section of Chemical Education had completed four years of programming, and it would seem that they were poised for acceptance as the sixth division in the ACS. Instead, the bottom fell out of the organization and it disappeared from sight for a number of years. It is hard to determine what may have caused this sudden and unexpected collapse. The key to sustaining any basically volunteer organization is the dedication of a core number of key people. By 1911, Talbot had become chair of the Physical and Inorganic Chemistry Division and an associate editor of JACS, Herty was dean of the School of Applied Science at North Carolina, and Newell was busy writing textbooks and laboratory manuals. Key individuals like Noyes, Little, Richards, and Nichols would probably be willing to present papers if asked, but they were not about to undertake what many people have found as a daunting task, that of preparing a program of speakers for a scientific meeting. And then, within a few years of the initial silence, the First World War created a new focus for their energies and activities (60). As the key officers changed in the AAAS Section C, they too drifted away from chemical education topics. Whatever the reason, and the official record is silent on this matter, chemical education would have to wait for another time and another group of people to start all over again in the growing ACS organization. Catalyst During this strange hiatus, there must have been individual discussions about the defunct Section of Chemical Education. One of the few recorded occurred during the Philadelphia ACS meeting in 1919 when Mr. and Mrs. Wilhelm Segerblom paid a visit to Edgar Fahs Smith at the University of Pennsylvania. Smith was then sixty-five years old but still Provost of the University of Pennsylvania and had already served one term as an ACS president. Segerblom, an instructor in chemistry at Philips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire, remarked to Smith that “something should be done to give more interest to the teachers of chemistry at the meetings of the Society”. Segerblom boldly told Smith, “If the Society expected teachers to attend its meetings, it would have to give their problems a definite place on the program.” Smith admitted to Segerblom that he had received similar comments from other teachers and that he had already “given the matter considerable attention”. In later years Smith would refer to this conversation as having been the spark that kindled his interest in an organization for chemical education (47). In spite of his conciliatory comments to Segerblom, Smith took no action at all for the next two years. The real catalyst for the crystallization of classroom chemists into a unified organization would come from an unlikely source, as catalysts often do. In 1919, Edward Ellery wrote to the editor of The Journal of Industrial and Engineering


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Chemistry (61) responding to a previous article about a manufacturer’s experience with graduate chemical engineers. Ellery dared the editor to establish an “Educational Column” in the Journal and challenged the ACS to establish a permanent committee on education, noting that the AIChE had already done so several years earlier. “Here is where the ACS and similar organizations can do a great work in advancing the cause of chemical education in America”, Ellery said, asking them to set standards and rank institutions where chemists are being trained (61). Ellery, then fifty-one years old, had studied with Nernst and received his Ph.D. with Ludwig Gatterman at Heidelberg University. He was in his fifteenth year at Union College, where the new chemistry building he was responsible for was under construction. Two years after issuing his challenge to the ACS, Ellery was presenting a paper before the Physical Chemistry Division at the Rochester meeting in the spring of 1921. Number 18 on the program,15 Ellery’s talk was sandwiched between “The Volumetric Oxidation of Sulfide to Sulfate” and “The Apparent Irreversibility of the Calomel Electrode”. Its title, “Research for the Undergraduate,” seemed out of place in its surroundings, but not to a young physical chemistry professor from the University of Maryland named Neil Elbridge Gordon. Gordon, then thirtyfive years old, was in his first year at the University of Maryland after having spent two years at Goucher College. Ellery’s paper was, Gordon said later, “one of the most interesting” (62). After the session was over, Gordon approached Harry N. Holmes,16 the division chair, and asked if more papers like Ellery’s could be included in future programs. Holmes was encouraging but suggested that Gordon should write to Ellery. Neil Gordon After reflecting on Holmes’ suggestion, Gordon felt that the Physical Chemistry Division was not the proper place for education papers, although Chemical Abstracts was placing them in its physical chemistry section at the time. Gordon wrote Ellery about the idea of having chemical education papers “stand on their own”. Ellery suggested that Gordon visit Charles Lathrop Parsons, the ACS secretary, because Parson’s office was nearby in Washington, DC. Parsons told Gordon he did not believe “a section of teachers would live,” and Gordon left feeling rather discouraged. Gordon did not give up, as others might have done. He went back to Parsons a second time, pleading his case in such a forceful manner that Parsons relented. Parsons suggested that Gordon find fifteen other people who felt as he did and then he would present the case to E. F. Smith, who was then serving as ACS president. Given his previous attitude about a lack of interest on the part of teachers, Parsons probably thought that was the last he would see of Neil Gordon. But ten days later Gordon was on Parson’s doorstep with the required number of letters. Parsons, true to his word, passed the information on to Smith. (Unfortunately, Gordon never revealed the names of those first fifteen supporters.) Smith had just started a section on the History of Chemistry and Parsons thought the teachers could be combined with the history group. Smith was opposed to that idea and in his capacity as ACS President appointed himself as chair of the 648

new probationary education section. That was not a bad idea at the beginning, since Smith was president of the ACS for 1921 and would be reelected for 1922; moreover, his name would lend credibility to the enterprise. But, Smith said, it would be up to Gordon to serve as secretary and prepare a program for the fall meeting in New York. With his youthful enthusiasm, Gordon succeeded in putting together a session that ran over three days. Optimistically, he placed a footnote under the identification of the meeting room—“If room proves too small, adjourn to 411 Kent.” Indeed, the original room was too small, and they did have to move (47, 63). There were some old names and some new names at this first session of the Section of Chemical Education. Holmes was there, along with Lyman C. Newell, W. A. Noyes, Talbot, and Ellery. Smith opened the session by describing the purposes of this new organization, and Gordon closed it by discussing a question that would become dear to his heart— “When will the teaching of chemistry become a science?” (63). On Probation The snowball Gordon had unleashed grew rapidly, contrary to what Parsons had predicted. Within two years there were over 1000 members, at a time when the total membership of the ACS was about 15,000 (64). Gordon maintained a vigorous programming schedule. For the next six meetings, from the spring of 1922 at Birmingham, Alabama to the spring of 1924 in Washington, DC, the Gordon programs averaged twenty-two papers per meeting.15 Gordon covered the universe of chemical education and showed an amazing tenacity in finding speakers and symposia that would attract attention. After all, this was a probationary period, and the rest of the Society was watching. Success at Last Neil Gordon had shown convincingly that his idea of a special section for new teachers was here to stay and was being taken seriously by chemical educators, government scientists, and industrial chemists alike. The ACS council granted his petition to remove the probationary status at the Milwaukee, Wisconsin, meeting in the fall of 1923 (65). Gordon quickly used the new Journal of Chemical Education to spread the word about the next meeting in Washington in the spring of 1924. He implored his readers to attend because, for the first time, the new Division would be able to elect their own officers and arrange for the adoption of a constitution (66). Gordon was not disappointed. More than 250 chemical educators gave up “their time and money...to talk over...common problems and take home better material and methods to use in their classes.” An exuberant and delighted Gordon proclaimed, “It is clearly evident that a majority of our chemistry teachers are no longer content to remain in their ruts, but are determined to get out on the frontier and carve out new and better ways of doing things” (67). It was at the meeting in Ithaca, New York, in the fall of 1924, that the new Division of Chemical Education appeared for the first time on the program of an ACS meeting. With Smith having served his purpose, Gordon was now the chairman of the Division and the secretary was Wilhelm



Segerblom, whose pleas had caught Smith’s ear back in 1919. Gordon celebrated by starting off the meeting in Ithaca with a presentation by Samuel P. Mulliken of MIT on the outline of a course on qualitative organic analysis for which Mulliken was undoubtedly the pioneer and acknowledged expert.17 The discussion of Mulliken’s presentation was led by Roger Adams and Morris Kharasch (68). Neil Gordon was the consummate professional and intended to make his mark by ensuring that the teaching of chemistry would become a true profession. But Gordon also knew that in order to teach chemistry you also had to be a chemist. He put it very succinctly, “A river never rises above its source nor are we likely to graduate greater chemists than we find in our teaching profession” (67). It is ironic that in his writings about the new division, Gordon never once mentioned any of his predecessors, either in the AAAS Section C or the aborted ACS Section of Chemical Education that started in 1908. Nevertheless, after the Ithaca meeting a confident Gordon, having taken the first step by forming the DIVCHED, predicted that “the value of a live organization of chemistry teachers, both from the standpoint of the teacher and of the sciences, can hardly be overestimated. We cannot expect to receive promotions in our profession until we make ourselves worthy of such promotions. Let us go forward together. There is strength in unity” (69). Notes 1. Presented in part on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the American Chemical Society’s Division of Chemical Education, 218th National Meeting, American Chemical Society, New Orleans, LA, August 24, 1999, Abstract CHED 215. 2. Wood tar and potash were exported from Virginia in 1608, but Winthrop was the first to establish a regular chemical facility. The ACS celebrated the tercentenary of the American chemical industry at its national meeting in New York in April, 1935. See Our Chemical Heritage; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 1935; p 54. 3. Rush, Woodhouse, and Wistar were all faculty members at the Philadelphia Medical School and were among the first professors of chemistry in the United States. 4. This Benjamin Silliman is the son of the Benjamin Silliman mentioned earlier in the text. The elder Silliman did not use “Sr.” and his son rarely used “Jr.”, especially after his father’s death in 1864, thus creating some confusion in the literature about which one was the author of a particular paper. 5. Ira Remsen would eventually write seven textbooks, found and edit the American Chemical Journal, and develop the research model for education in chemistry at Johns Hopkins University. 6. Wiley deserves most of the credit for the enactment of the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906. 7. The tumultuous early years of the ACS have recently been reviewed. See Bohning, J. J. “Fighting City Hall: The Role of Washington Chemists in the Nationalization of the American Chemical Society,” 220th American Chemical Society National Meeting, Washington, DC, 21 August 2000. 8. Stone’s younger brother was Harlan Fisk Stone, appointed attorney-general by President Calvin Coolidge and a supreme court chief justice by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. 9. Mabery had earlier published a paper with a student on

the brine associated with petroleum deposits. The student was Herbert H. Dow and the paper became the core of the original Dow process. 10. Clark was then at the University of Cincinnati but later became chief chemist of the United States Geological Survey in Washington, DC. He served as president of the ACS in 1901. 11. Ellen Swallow Richards graduated from Vassar College in 1870 and entered MIT, becoming the first American woman enrolled as a full-time student in a scientific institution. She became the first woman to receive a B.S. degree in 1873 and then remained at MIT as an instructor in sanitary chemistry until her death in 1911. See Costa, A. B. In American Chemists and Chemical Engineers; Miles, W. D., Ed.; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 1976; pp 405–406. 12. The entertainment committee at the Boston meeting arranged to treat the ACS members to a trolley ride through the streets of Boston, starting at 3 p.m. and lasting for 3 hours! 13. Long died in 1918 from broken health caused, as he told his friend Ira Remsen, “from the persistent and violent attacks of the American press on his chemistry.” See Bohning, J. J. “John H. Long, President of the American Chemical Society for 1903” 214th National Meeting, American Chemical Society, Las Vegas, NV, August 1997. 14. The ACS was small then and there was no call for multiplying the divisions. In fact, in 1905, when the Society membership was approaching 5000, there were five groups approaching divisional status and there were 19 active local sections. 15. At this time the complete list of papers presented at an ACS meeting could only be found in a printed program, not in a journal or magazine publication. The program for this and the other early meetings of the Section and Division of Chemical Education are available from the ACS Library in Washington, DC or the Chemical Heritage Foundation in Philadelphia. 16. Holmes was a colloid chemist from Oberlin College who would later write Out of the Test Tube, a book that helped popularize chemistry. 17. His son, Robert S. Mulliken, won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1966.

Acknowledgments I wish to thank Mary Virginia Orna for the invitation to present this paper at the DIVCHED 75th anniversary symposium in New Orleans. Her arrangement for travel support from the Chemical Heritage Foundation is gratefully acknowledged. I am also indebted to O. Theodor Benfey for his continued interest in and discussions of historical matters. Literature Cited 1. Browne, C. A.; Weeks, M. E. A History of the American Chemical Society; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 1952; pp 286–288. 2. Hale, H. Ind. Eng. Chem. 1951, 43, 1034–1038. 3. Lewenstein, B. V. J. Chem. Educ. 1989, 66, 37–44. 4. Newell, L. C. J. Chem. Educ. 1932, 9, 677–695. 5. Mitchill, Samuel L. Nomenclature of the New Chemistry; T. & J. Swords: New York, 1794. 6. Bohning, J. J. The Chemical Revolution (An International Historic Chemical Landmark); American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 1999; p 8.


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