Chemical Education Today
book & media reviews
Eilhard Mitscherlich: Prince of Prussian Chemistry Hans-Werner Scühtt. Translated from the German by William E. Russay. History of Modern Chemical Sciences Series. American Chemical Society and the Chemical Heritage Foundation: Washington, DC, 1997. xvi + 239 pp. ISBN 0-8412-3345-4. $59.95. Eilhard Mitscherlich’s (1794–1863) most important scientific contribution was that in 1819 he noted and described for the first time the phenomenon of isomorphism. The name derives from the Greek: isos is the same and morphe is form. Isomorphism is the existence of different crystalline substances with the same crystal shape. Isomorphous compounds have almost identical structures, but in them one or more atoms are replaced by chemically similar ones. A crystal of one compound can grow in the solution of another. This observation appears very insightful even today; imagine what it meant in 1819, almost a hundred years before X-ray crystallography began! I would place the importance of this observation for the development of crystallography on par with Johannes Kepler’s realization that the regular hexagonal shape of snow crystals must originate from the internal arrangement of their building elements (1611) and John Dalton’s atomic theory (1808). Mitscherlich did further noteworthy research subsequently, but isomorphism remained his most important contribution. He was 25 at the time of this discovery. This monograph provides a meticulous account of the available data on Mitscherlich’s life and works, with all the necessary background that can only come from a true scholar equally at home in chemistry and history. Mitscherlich came from a pastor’s family and studied medicine and Oriental languages; and, while he was studying elsewhere, the University of Giessen awarded him a Ph.D. degree already in 1814.
1402
This Orientalist-physician started his chemical research in his botanist mentor’s laboratory at the University of Göttingen. In 1822, at the age of 28, he became a member of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences and full professor at the Friedrich-Wilhelm University in Berlin. He devoted the rest of his life to chemistry and mineralogy, and was very much part of the Prussian Establishment. He was a protege of Jöns Jakob Berzelius (1777–1848) and developed a very positive relationship with him; his relationship with Justus Liebig (1803–1873) was discordant. Hans-Werner Schütt’s monograph is an excellent source for students of the history of chemistry and mineralogy. I can’t help feeling, however, that there may have been a missed opportunity to probe deeper into this quite extraordinary example of somebody making a tremendous discovery in an empirical science in a very early age. We are much more accustomed to seeing mathematicians excelling so early. Other examples are Louis de Broglie, in theoretical physics, with his discovery of the wave nature of electrons, and Svante Arrhenius, in chemistry, with his electrolytic theory of dissociation. Both came to their Nobel Prize–winning discoveries during their doctoral studies. Mitscherlich, however, seems to have spent much of his time in medicine and Oriental languages, even writing lengthy treatises in Latin and Persian, prior to his work leading to the discovery. May it be that such a background contributed to his becoming especially alert in his mineralogic–crystallographic experiments? May it also be that his field was so rudimentary at the time that it was not so difficult even for a newcomer to come up with something so strikingly new? Is there an inspirational lesson in Mitscherlich’s story for us that this very scholarly monograph failed to convey? István Hargittai Budapest Technical University, and Hungarian Academy of Sciences Budapest H-1521, Hungary
[email protected] Journal of Chemical Education • Vol. 74 No. 12 December 1997
