Encounter in Elysium
Persons in the dialogue: Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (1143-94) and Friedrich August Kekul6 (1829-96) Scene: A place in the happy memories of chemistry Lavoisier: I am happy t o see you here, monsieur, for though you were not the most modest of chemists, you did much good with your ideas about the valences of atoms and the nature of chemical binding. Truly, these ideas form the hasis for much that chemistry has contributed in helping mankind. Kekuli.: You are now, as you were in life, the most gracious of Frenchmen, and I am delighted to see you in such obvious good health. Indeed, the health care here must he remarkable. Lavoisier: There were claims, to that effect when we were on earth, of course, hut I admit to being pleased with the results of the corrective surgery that was performed on me here. You will he even more impressed when you see Marie Antoinette. Kekuli.: Iloak forward to it. Lavoisier: Tell me, KekulB, why was there so much confusion in chemistry during the first quarter of the 19th century? Dalton, as clumsy and slow-witted as he was, came up with a first-rate idea in the atomic theory, and Avogadro clearly resolved the problem of anomalous atomic weights of gaseous elements by pointing out that some were diatomic. With these ideas in the open, surely reliable atomic weights and a theory of valence should have came easily. KekulC: While everyone accepted Dalton's theory, few paid any attention to Avogadro. His arguments were just not convincing. It was similar, I expect, to the situation you and your colleagues eaperienced with the theory of heat. As early as 1660, Boyle, Leibniz and others recognized heat as motion. Yet the caloric theory was so well-entrenched that in 1189 you designated caloric a n element and added it to your list of elements. Convincing chemists that Lavoisier was wrong about this wasno easy task. Lavoisier: In truth. I had many doubts about caloric, but there were so many other things happening during that period-the overthrow of phlogiston, the discovery of oxygen, the establishing of standards far weights and measures and of a system of nomenclature for chemical substances-and there were so few active investigators, that we simply didn't get around to looking a t the nature of heat. KekulC: Understandable, hut I wish you had not called it an element. Lavoisier: 1 am pleased t o see, however, that the gram is still the standard for weight. I recall the struggle 1 had getting Lagrange, Laplace and the others to accept the weight of a cubic centimeter of water a t O"C as the standard. They argued that since the meter was to he the standard of length, the cubic meter should be the standard for volume, and the gram should he defined as the weight of a cubic meter of water a t 0°C. What a mess this would have made far chemists. Kekuli.: How true! And our living colleagues must he an guard lest the physicists and mathematicians do us in on this yet. Speaking of standards for weight, I understand that the defining measurements on the gram were made on the balances in your personal laboratory. Is i t true that your laboratory was equipped with over 250 instruments and more than 13,000 glass containers? Was this really a working laboratory? It sounds more like a scientific palace. Lavoisier: You must remember that my father left me well off. In addition, as Commissioner of Gunpowder far France, I succeeded in upgrading the quality of our gunpowder until i t was the best in Europe. We then exported large quantities to the American colonies. This added to my income and helped finance my laboratory. Incidentally, one of my associates in the work with gunpowder seems to have done well as an industrial chemist in America. His name is duPont. I note also that some of your former students have made contributions in industrial chemistry.
I editorially speaking
KekulB: The benzene theory gave a tremendous boost to the coal-tar dye industry, and a number of my former students found this industry a challenging outlet for their creativity. I also am proud of many other farmer students and associates who distinguished themselves in academic wark-Erlenmeyer, von Baeyer, Beilstein, Lothar Meyer are among these. Lavoisier: von Baeyer is a good man, hut I thought him a bit unkind when he spoke of you as a general who desired only to command nature, asserting that you had no interest in substances themselves, hut only in whether they conformed to yaur ideas. KekulB: Undoubtedly there is truth in what he says. As you know, students get to know the Professor quite well in our husiness. I count my critical and organizational abilities among my strongest, and I.tried to bring out these talents in my students. Not all students shared my interests, of course, and I did not expect them to agree with me or to patronize me. I did expect them to he good chemists, each in his own way. My ow" dealings with Liebig, my first chemistry teacher, were not always smaothespecially in the matter of puhlieation. Lavoisier: Liebig's excesses as editor of the Annalen were incredible. French rulers were guillotined far less! Yet his rigidity and authoritarianism spurred a great many young chemists to greater heights, forcing them to raise the quality of their work to levels i t never would have reached otherwise. Kekuli.: Perhaps boo are right I am shnmrd to admit, however. that thew were times that I compromised irnportnnt prtnriples to prt Lirbig to publiah n paper. While I find this u n f m m a t e . LIPbig's intractability was a minor annoyance in comparison with Murat's viciousness toward you. Levoisier: Murat was an evil and treacherous man. Perhaps I should have realized this earlier. His fanaticism and hatred alone-coming forth as they did with the populace already amused-destroyed the French Academy of Sciences and led to the deaths of 24 of us in May 1794. Had he applied his energies and talents to chemistry as effectively as he used them in destructive political activism, he would have made significant cantributions to science. Tragically, too many potentially good seientistsare consumed by infirmities of character. KekuM: I have made similar observations. Lavoisier: What is yaur view of contemporary chemistry? It certainly has me confused. The number of investigators-especially in America-is hard to imagine, and the sophistication of the techniques is as marvelous as i t is mystifying. Despite this, and many truly superior contributions, the overall quality of the work is spotty a t best. KekulB: It is almost as if the great volume of published results had inhibited creativity, and the sophisticated techniques had served as a maze from which some workers never emerge. After all, few of us were real geniuses; yet with many fewer numbers and much less to work with, we solved some very difficult problems and-while we made our share of mistakes-seldom did we allow ourselves to get bogged down in trivia and minutiae. Lavaisier: Still, ehemistry has moved on without us. It is pleasing to know that some of our ideas have withstood the onslaught of thousands of minds and many times more experiments, and continue to he useful. It is especially good to see that the theoretical element of the seience-the element we are responsible for, and the only real source of error-is being advanced less by speculation and more by reason. KekulC: We all fallow the path of the great mountain climbers, and stand on the shoulders of our predecessors looking for a spot hieher u p on the mountain where the foot of a further climber may find solid ground. As we climb, it sometimes helps to pause and dream a little-but we must never act on our dreams until they have been tested by the wakingunderstanding. Lavoisier: We think asane.
WTL Volume 57,Number 8, August 1974
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