J. J. Zuckerman University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 73019
An Autobiographical lniroductlon I am a professional chemist with no formal training in 'history since high school. A strong, private interest remains from those days, despite the painful rigors of the compulsory one-semester course on the historvof chemistrv that those of my generation often were subjeited to as unbergraduates. After a lapse of 30 years, all that is now recalled is the given name of Paracelcus-Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim. which we students thoueht funny a t the time, especially the Bombast part. The images of all those important alchemists whose likenesses we were shown a t slide presentations (Darkness a t Noon?) have long since faded from memory. That I should have had this inflicted upon me at the hands of teachers at the University of Pennsylvania is fitting, since that institution is now the home of the Center for History of Chemistry (CHOC). I thought it ironic when, in my senior year, the university thought to bestow upon me, one with so little interest in chemical history, the Edgar Fahs Smith Scholarship. I t is Smith's (Professor. Head, Dean. and later Provost a t Pennsylvania) collection which is a t the center of the CHOC holdings, headquartered in a building named after him. Perhaps s;hliminaUy inspired by the combination of the compulsory coursework and the monetary reward, I, too, have been collecting historical anecdotes about chemists and
showing slides illustrnting their likenesses sinre 1 began teaching. While studying for the Haward graduate qualify. ing examinations, I h a d the marvelous textbook by Louis and Mary Fieser ( I ) recommended to me. I wonder how many others found the historical material in the footnotes a welcome respite from the tedium of studying the organic chemistry presented in the text (suffice it to say that I am not an organic chemist). I t was in these footnotes that one learned the dates and chemical eenealoev ... of each of the famous chemists mentioned - "\Vho begat whomw--sortor a hiblicnl "Book of iYuml)ers" for #manic - chemsitrv. Fascinating! Now I go up and down the country on American Chemical Society Lecture Tours and other circuits showing slides and telling the stories I have learned. Every class that I have ever taught has had historical material interspersed with the chemistry. It is clear now that I have been doing unto others as they did untome. I have inflicted this historical treatment upon my own students, and invariably, I show a slide of my own genealogy (see figure). ~
Presented at the 26th Oklahoma Coordinating Conference on Chemical Education, Norman. OK, March 1986.
I
G-F. Rouelle 1703-1770
Chemical genealogy of the author.
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Journal of Chemical Education
PARIS
PARE
A Chemical Genealogy T o see all these great chemists' names is inspirational. T o realize that they are direct, "blood-line" ancestors is a clear mandate to work harder. t o "Go thou and do likewise." We have the great ~ n t o i n e ' ~ a u r e nLavoisier, t the Father of Modern Chemistry, and his fellow countrymen Berthollet and Gay-Lussac, after whom a street near the Sorbonne in Paris is named, in the French line. Among the Germans we have the great Justus von Liebig, whose journal is still being published: Robert Bunsen among those who introduced ;hem lab to the teaching of chemisiry and who invented the famous burner as well as the H2S qua1 scheme; Leopold Gmelin, an organic chemist whose Gmelin's Handbook of Inorganic Chemistry is still arriving at our library, volume by volume; Friedrich Wohler, who is said to have dismantled the idea of a "vital force" in one decisive experiment (2); Friedrich Aueust Kekulb von Strandonitz. who eave us the " benzene ring; Emil Fischer, after whom we prepared all those ohenvlhvdrazine derivatives in oreanic aual lab: and ~ l f r e d ~ t wwho k , invented the glass vacuum line so that he could handle reactive boron- and silicon-hvdride rases and who gave us a systematic nomenclature f i r inorganic suhstances. There are those who taught us how to determine molecular weights, especially Dumas and Victor Meyer. We have the great Swede, J. J. Berzelius, who gave us the idea that there should be letter symbols for each element. We have the Englishmen Sir Benjamin Brodie and H. J. Emelbus. More recentlv come the Americans. standine on all those strong shouliers: Ira Remsen, who 'first synihesized saccharin, Head of Chemistry a t Johns Hopkins, later President there, and whose ashes were finally interred in the walls of the chemistry building. He taught Kohler, whose student James Bryant Conant wrote a best-selling organic text, hecame President of Harvard Universitv, the U.S. High Commissioner to Germany during the occupation (theDouglas MacArthur of Germany?), and reformed the American high school system while in retirement. L. M. Dennis headed his department a t Cornell; his student Eugene G. Rochow (the father of the silicones) married Dennis' secretary (hence a wavy connecting line). Conant was Theodore William Richards' son-in-law. the latter the first American to win the A'otwl Pri7e in rhrmistry (for the acnlmte determination of atomic weiehtii). . Henri Muissan won his Nohel for inventing the electric furnace but is best remembered for being t h l first to isolate elemental fluorine. Here is a galaxy of stars drawn from analytical (Bergmann, Freseuius), organic (von Leibig), inorganic (BerzeliUS), physical (Berthollet, Richards), and spectroscopic (Bunsen) chemistry. To be a part of such a family is to be proud. I have shown this chart everywhere I have lectured.
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Professional Chemists and Amateur HiWorlans As members of the world's largest profession, we teach chemistrv as nrofessionals. hut we teach historv as mere amateurs. w i t h little effortbr thought, and certainly no real historical scholars hi^ in anv sense. most of us teach. alone with the history, cekain attitudes; we unconsciousl~reinforce certain myths, all in an orgy of general self congratulation. We inflict upon innocent students our own prejudices from a positiion of authority with hardly ever a disclaimer concerning where our chemical expertise ends and where the inculcating of our personal opinions begins. The use of false facts, apo&phal tales, misissigned priority for discovery, and narrow historical viewpoints lends itself to the drawing of lessons which guide current thought and action. We do all this innocently. I raise here neither a claim of conspiracy or subversion nor have I uncovered a plot. My thesis is simply that we should consider carefully what i t is that we really s should ouit doing it. do, and n e r h a ~ we Let ub take ihe figure asan example. The most that can be claimed tor the wllection of names and date* it represents is that they have been copied correctly from available sources.
Whu ran vouch for the accuracy of the information presented there? Certainly not I. The compilation is entirely derivative and employs no scholarship. And what message is really communicated to the audience? No Russian names are found listed, no one from south of the Alps in Europe, no women, no orientals, no blacks or other persons of color. From this genealogy we seem to learn that our chemical ancestors were all men, all from Western Europe, all from north of the Alos-Frenchmen. Scandinavians; Germans, and ~ r i t i s hculminating , at last i n w e ~ m e r icans who then took their contributions and extended them intv thr 20th century in an unremitting catalog of progress. The eftect on the rendem and hearers not members of the aforementioned groups can only be guessed. Instead of the warm glow of encouragement alluded to above, there may he a feeling of exclusion. Instead of feeling part of a brotherhood of men of science with its sons, brothers, male cousins, uncles, fathers, and grandfathers, outsiders may gain the sense that chemistry is a gentlemen's club in which they do not belong and to whose admission to membership they can never aspire. The Namlng- of Things The process ha* a subtle beginning. It takes shape in the naming of t h i n s . All dismverie;, have had their discoverrrs; all inv&tions,iheir inventors. Some we name after those responsible (eponymy), honoring those persons and celebrating their achievements. Others we do not. What gets named after whom, or at all, changes from place to place, countrv to countrv. - . laneuaee to laneuaee. culture to culture. and wiih time. Someday &re shouid bk published a lexicod of science which s~ecificallv these differences. A " emphasizes few examples will illustrate what is meant here. The process is one both of omission and commission. Why are Rontgen rays called X-rays outside Germany? Is it merely the difficulty of pronouncing the o or are more powerful forces at work? Rudolf L. Mosshauer's discovery is only called nuclear gamma-ray resonance (NGR) in the Soviet Union, as far as I am aware. Where is a Hofmann clamp simply a pinch clamp? Who discovered oxygen, the Swede Carl Wilhelm Scheele, the Frenchman Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, or theEnglish-American Joseph Priestley? Is it Boyle's Law or Mariotte's Law? Is i t Dalton's Law or the Avoeadro-Ampere Principle? Is it Avogadro's number or Loschmidt's? Why do we teach the freshmen about the principle of LeChitelier when it is not a principle and appears to have been stated more effectively by van't Hoff and others? Did the Russian Smekal first discover the Raman effect? Did Charles Martin Hall first win metallic aluminum from its bauxite ore, or was i t Paul-Louis-Toussaint Heroult, who was born in the same month of the same year, discovered the same process in the same month of the same year, and died in the same month of the same year as Hall? Should Eugene G. Rochow he credited with first synthesizing directly from elemental silicon the essential dimethyldichlorosilane precursor to the useful silicone nolvmers or Richard Miiller of Dresden, who discovered t i e process independently hut slightly later and whose name is celebrated in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union? Did not the American Fletcher workine in Germanv discover the Grianard reaction before Victor &ignard? id not Alfred stock in the 1920's and Anton B. Burg in the 1930's carry out the hydroboration reaction before Herbert C. Brown, who won the Nohel Prize for the work? Should E. 0. Fischer and G. Wilkinson have been awarded the prize for sandwich compounds when it was Thomas Kealy and Peter L. Pauson at Duquesne University (Kealv was suhseauentlv denied tenure) and Miller. Tehboth and ~ r e m a i n eof ~ i i t i s hOxygen who first synthesized ferrocene and Rohert B. Woodward who first correctlv glimpsed its strucrure? Should the bacteriologist Paul Ehrlich haw heen madr a laureate for the antisyphilis drugs 606
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Volume 64 Number 10 October 1967
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(Salvarsan) and 909 (Neosalvarsan), when i t was the chemist Sahschiro Hata who actually prepared the nearly thousand compounds? Should we honor the 18th-century British Schod or pneumatic chemists Joseph Black, Joseph I'riestley, Henrv C'avendish. Stephen Hales, and Robert Hoylr or their 17th century Italian counterparts Galileo Galilei and his students 'I'orricelli, Viviani, etc.? Did the Wright brothr r i really invent powered flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in 1903 or was it Gustave Whitehead at Hridgeport, Connecticut. in I899 or Alexander Muzhaiskv in Russia in 1882? (3). id the Duke of Wellington really &n the Battle of Waterloo, or was it General Bliicher, who, arriving on the field late in the day with the Prussian army, saved his neck? In some cases it is the difference between the discovery of a phenomenon and its subsequent exploitation (Bla Fletcher vs. Grignard), the delivery to the profession and popularization being considered more important in chemistry (4). In other cases the giving credit where credit is not due can he the result of the operation of a principle laid down in the "Gospel According to Saint Matthew" (25:29) "Unto every one that hath shall he eiven. and he shall have abundance: hut from him that h a t i not,'shall be taken away even that which he hath" (5).Perhaps it does not matter. As someone said of Rohespierre, he must have been a very clever man to have all those brilliant savings falselv attributed to him. The already famous among i s become kven more famous; the others are condemned to obscurity. As one waggish chemist exclaimed, "The only thing you know for certain is that if something scientific is named after someone, he or she did not disco;er it!" In other cases we have the operation of a principle delineated first in the "Compulsory Preface (This Means You)" to the witty 1066 and All That by Sellar and Yeatman (6). Their message is that "Historv is not what vou thought. I t is what you canremember". 1f ybudo not happen t o remember it. then it mav as well not have happened. Period. I am making a brief for the elimikation of the attempt a t teaching histow in courses meant to teach chemistry and in addition, the elimination of named phenomena or artifacts (eponymy) in science. In the "noncompulsory preface" to the new series, Inorganic Reactions and Methods, (7) the point is made that current chemistry is plagued by the use of nondescriptive names in place of more precise expository terms. We have everyting from Ahegg's rule, Adkin's cataIvst. Admiraltv brass. Alfven number. the Amadori rear& the Zdanovski; law, rangement, an2 ~ n d i s s o oxidation v Zeeman effect, Zincke cleavage, and Zinin reduction. Even practiced chemists cannot define these terms precisely except for their own areas of specialty. The names are assigned on the basis of atrocious historical research, or none a t all. The effect is obfuscation and confusion and the defeat of the student and others attempting to penetrate the subject from the outside. Lavoisier made this point in his Method of Nomenclature in 1787.
verse with all of the ahove, having in i t the magnificence of the Hispanic, the sprightliness of the French, the sturdiness of the German, the tenderness of the Italian, and the conciseness of powerful imagery of the Greek and Latin tongues (8).T o be read by other chemists, however, one mustwritein English or publish in a journal such as Angewandte Chemie or the Russian journals that appear in English translation. Geographical
The local contribution is always exaggerated, extenuated, and enlarged. My fellow townsman, the remarkable Benjamin Franklin, to name hut one example, is enshrined indelibly in Philadelphia for his scientific contributions, which it must he admitted, were only modest when compared to those of his contemporaries Laplace, Lavoisier, Linnaeus, Lomonosov, and Joseph Priestley. National
Histories have been written with the object of exalting the nation. Most of the 50 American states mandate that a course in its own history he taught to high school students who thereby learn that theirs is indeed "The Top State". Each sovereign unit around the globe has its own pantheon in whichare enshrined its own scientific heroes and heroines. Occasionally, a single great person can he shared by two nations as with Nicolai Coperoicus who is revered hoth in Germany and Poland, hut this may be because each nation claims him as a native son. The overweenine and intense Angluphilia whichaftlicts all our institutions ~Thigherlearninr, hut eipeciall\ the East Coast-based I\?. Leacue. results in-our students &mming that our own histor;, e;en the development of our educational and scientific institutions, derives from a smooth continuum of English history into our own. Even current news is often reported hy a BBC feed through London where most of our "European" correspondents reside. In years gone by, our major wire services employed Britons to transmit the news to us, with the result that we often take the British point of view v i s - h i s the French, Italian, German, etc., with little in our own interest to justify it. This is reinforced by the linguistic bias discussed ahove. However. our institutions of hieher learning. and especially rheir graduate schools, derive more frum Heidelbrra and Gutringen than from Oxford and Camhridre. In fairness, for example, the descriptionsof the beginnings in London of the Roval Societv found in manv American elementary science texts should at least mention the Accademia dei Lincei founded in Italy hy Federico Cesi, which predated it. Other instances are legion. The effect of all this on the scientist himself was succinctly put by Albert Einstein during an address a t the Sorhonne3: If my theory of relativity is proven successful, Germany will claim me as a German, and France will declare that I am a citizen of the world. Should my theory prove untrue, France will say that I am a German, and Germany will declare that I am a Jew.
A Listing of Biases in Chemistry Linguistic
Religious
"A Frenchman's a man, ain't he? Then why don't he talk like a man?" asked the Oklahoma sage, Will Rogers.' Ohviously, those who do not or cannot speak with the tongues of men, though they may be angels,2 are not read, and their works are not honored. For my fellow countrymen the order of preference is American English > English English > Western European majority > Latin > Western European minority > Greek >Eastem European, especially using the Cyrillic alphabet > Asian, African, Middle Eastern, or Oriental laneuaees. E m ~ e r o rCarolus V of Rome was wont to say that i h e U ~ i s p a n itongue c was seemingly for converse with God, the French with friends, the German with enemies, and the Italian, with the feminine'sex. Mikhail Vasil'evich Lomonosov claimed that Russian is appropriate to con-
On a broader historical stage hoth we and the Western Europeans are likely to view the development of science as a
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Journal of Chemical Education
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Jimaskedthe same question of Huck while they both were on the raft: "Is a Frenchman a man?" "Yes." "Well, den1 Dad blame it, why doan he talk like a man? You answer me dat!" Samuel Langhorne Clemens, Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckle berry Finn; Mark Twain Co.: New York, 1884. pace, I Corinthians, 1 3 1 . Einstein's treatment at the hands of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences is described by I. M. Klotz (Phys. Tcday. 1985, July, 13).
process which had its roots in the Mediterranean antiquity of Greece and Rome and proceeded from there to Western Europe (and especially to Germany or Great Britain, according to one view), and thence to the United States in a single rather smooth, concerted action. This brings up for discussion two additional forms of bias which merit our attention: the religious and the racial. Jews and others must deal with the aonarent disnronortionate share of contributions that "the People of the ~ o o k " havemade to science. UDto World War 11. for example, -6 X lo5 Jews living in ~ e r m m produced ~ as many ~ o b elaurel ates as their -6 X 107 German neighbors. Several of the chemists whose names grace the figure were Jews. In atomic and nuclear physics there was almost a monopoly position with Einstein, Sommerfeld, Bohr, Born, Ehrenfest, Michelson, Meitner, Frisch, Fermi (by marriage), Oppenheimer, Abelson. Kistiakowski. Teller. Szilard. Weissko~f.etc. Even several of the people in the U. S. govkrnment hakng to do with the control of atomic enerev (Bernard Baruch lauthor of the Baurch Plan] and David Eilienthal [first ~ h a i of ; the Atomic Energy Commission]) were Jewish. That this apparently disproportionate contribution could he made to American chemistry is amazing, given the record of discriminatory policies and hiring practices of the American chemical industry and universities. Alpha Chi Sigma, the National Professional Chemical Fraternity, excluded Jews (and blacks and women, vide infra). The example of the attitudes of the American medical schools is better known (and ironic, given that it was the Jew Simon Flexner who reformed them!). Chemistry must have been a rather inhospitable venue for the nonchristian as recently as 25 years aao. Implicit in some minds is the concept of a causal relation between the Reformation and the rise of modern science in Western Europe. This serves to reinforce the idea that science is not onlv exclusivelv a Western European enterprise hut largely a 1';ntwtant en&risr as well. I should not chink it too dit'ticult to imayine how all this and a bit mure can be compounded into a general feeling that science developed from Protestant northwestern European roots as a byproduct of the Reformation. It is all too easy to recall-(and especially certain that, in a predominantly Protestant nation such as the United States, recalled it will be) the treatment of Giordano Bruno and Galileo Galilei at the hands of the Roman Catholic C h ~ r c h I. t~ seems hardlv ever asked wht,therthe 16th century of ('ahin and Luther wasany more ssmoatheric to the scientific spirit (9). . . The p(:rsecutinn of Johannes Kepler at rhr hands of Protestant Tubingen seems r o he a rase in point. Kepler fnund refuge in Jesuit Austria, at the invitation of 'l'yrho Brahe and inherited the precise data on planetary motim that led tu t h ~three . famous laws of planetary motion, u,hich in turn were to provide Kewttm with his starting point. He surreeded Tvrho Hrnhe as court astronomer to the Catholic Emoeror. As we shall see later, it was Jesuit missionaries who combined their scientific expertise with a religious fervor sufficient to carry them to China and to allow them to serve as the vehicle hv which Eurooean science a t the time of the Renaissance was to make coniact with an already developed body of thought there (although i t must be mentioned that the neglect of the Copernican heliocentric system in China can be traced to the influence of these same Jesuits, while in Japan by contrast, Copernican ideas were fully admitted, thanks to the fact that their European contacts were with Protestant Dutch traders) (10). a in ally, a scorecard showing who was burned at the stake by whom would a t least have to include on the list Servetus (1509-1553), who was burned by Calvin at Geneva, to balance the name of Giordano Bruno (9). Even the torment of Galileo seems a much less clear-cut affair as descrihed in the writings of the latter-day Thomas Henry Huxleys and Herbert Spencers. The early 20th-cen~~~~
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tury successors of these gentlemen, still preserving the fervor and ferment of the late Victorian Wars for Liberation of the Spirit from the Shackles of Religion (Il), painted the picture with hold, contrasting brush strokes in vivid primary colors: Rationalism versus Mysticism; Science versus Religion; Progress against Repression; Us versus Them (12). All this is now transformed. Nowadays, Creationist Thems call themselves Us. Hut much biasstill prevails,and it is moreembarrassing to survey neu,er writings on the suhject. The propaganda in l'ror~!stunt countries IS so arrogant and persuasive that wen Cathohc intellectuals chemseloes prohahly succuml~to its influence. In the pnlitical campaign of 19fi0, which resulted in the dection of America's first Catholic president, the question "\Vhere are the Carhnlic intellectuals and scientists?" was rrpi*atedly raised ~ I Jthe opposition party press. In other countries the confusion is rumooundvd bv official state doctrine. A Soviet visitor to a ~ e s ' t e r nlaboratory was heard to exclaim to a chemist he met there, "How is i t possible for you to he a scientist and a Roman Catholic?" The Russian should perhaps have been reminded that the dictionary definition of catholic with a small "c" (universal, having sympathy for all) would make an excellent qualification for a research scientist. The desire to believe that the great benefits science has bestowed on humanity have resulted from the effects of one's own coreligionists is quite understandable. The pride that Jews take in the a . n.~ a r e n t"l vdisnronortionate share of contribution made by their own people, coming especially after the abolition of restrictive laws in Western Europe and of similar policies and practices in the United states, is natural and does admittedly seem justified by the record (although using this contribution as a justification for the existence of the Jews as a people can lead to unfortunate conclusions if extended). The view of the incompatibility of Roman Catholicism with science cannot be tenable in the face of contributions to all branches of modern science by persons of Catholic France and Italy and of largely Catholic Post World War I1 West Germany as well as by Catholic citizens of other countries. At one time such cluestions of relieion were suhiects of hot debate, but nowada).s hoth sides prS&ail. While the head of the Department ufTheoretical Chemistrv at Oxfurd, the lace ~rofessorCharles Coulson, was a lay preacher of the Methodist Church, perhaps the most prominent of his former students, christopher ~ o n ~ u e t - ~ i g g i nengaged s, in radio debates questioning the existence of God.
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Science and Governments Before moving on, i t would be well to lay to rest another type of myth, widely held in the Western democracies, which concerns the relation of science, and in fact of all creativity, to the climate of toleration in the community a t large and even to the oarticular oolitical or economic svstems in Dractice. I t can ;eadily heshown that scientists have mad; important contributions while workinn under conditions of nriGation of various kinds; although; to attack yet anoiher myth, privation is not necessary, nor prohahlv even desirable asan inspiration to creativity (washington, please take note!). Turning to the effects of various political and economic systems-on the scientific enterprise, it is fair to conThe subject of Galileo's relationship with the Church is periodical-
ly revived [Science 1964, 145,1271, and subgequent leners], but as early as 1925 Alfred Nonh Whitehead was arguing in his Lowell
Lectures that Galileo's insistence upon "irreducible and stubborn facts" was in actuality an anti-intellectualist position taken againstthe rationality of medieval thought. Readers interested in Whithead's development of this question are referred to his Lowell Lectures published as Science and the Modern World; Macmillan: New York, 1925.
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Number 10 October 1987
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clude that the national political and economic systems under which people work seem to have little to do with their output as scientists (cf. Russian biology under Lysenkoism). We are all familiar with the exodus of scientific talent from Nazi Germany, and while many did leave a Europe dominated by fascism. manv more. includine some of the verv best. staved on, devbting ihems&es whocheartedly (13).k n d i h o is to sav that the fascist liauid-fueled rocket technolorn is a less worthy contribution &an that of nuclear energy b y the democracies? Ethnic
I t is illuminating to read the testimony before the US. Congress in the debates surrounding the passage of the Immigration Act of 1924. Congress was told that it was clear that persons from sub-Alpine Europe were inferior to those horn north of the Alps. This mischievous eugenic hogwash was subsequently written into law. The cost to this country of the half centurv of oneration of these discriminatorv immigration prnrtices has yet to he assessed. The quota system was l m r d uuon the national origins of Amrricans in 1890, prior to thegreat wave of s o u t h k and eastern European immigration, and counted only white Americans in order to keep Africa from having any quota at all. The Irish were a special case. Though from northwest Europe, they were considered inferior because they were Catholic. Kenneth Roberts, the Maine novelist, writing in the Saturday Evening Post, had argued that the country would be flooded with "human parasites' who would produce "a hybrid race of good-for-nothing mongrels," and Madison Grant spoke of "amazing racial hybrids and some ethnic horrors that will he beyond the powers of future anthropologists to unravel". A barred zone including India and southeast Asia was added to Chinaand Japan, already limited by law and 'Gentleman's Agreer lent'. Thus were A-rahs, Bohunks, CamelJocks, Chinks, Coloreds, Coons, Dagus, Darkies, DuneCoons, Gooks, Greasehalls, Greasers, Harpies, Hymies, Ivans, Japs, Jewhoys, Kikes, Litvaks, Niggers, Nips, Pickaninnies, Polaks, Pupists, Rugheads, Ruskies, Slant-eyes, Spades, Spaghetti-henders, Spics, Wetbacks, Wogs, Wops, Yids, and other inferior types excluded in favor of Canucks, Coonasses, Dike-pluggers, Dutchmen (Pennsylvania, hence Germans), Frogs, Herring-eaters, Jerries, Krauts, Limeys, Mackerel-smackers, Micks, and Svens who were thereby encouraged to become Aggies, Gringos, Hayseeds, Hicks, Honkevs. Okies. Rebels.. Ruoers. ~ < , , Rednecks. ~ . . Rubes. W a s-~ .s . whiteys, Yanks, and yokeis. The storv of the foundine of Cal Tech bv Georse Ellerv Hale and dobert A. ~ i l l i k a nis equally i l ~ u m i n a t for i ~ ~thk light i t casts on the flavor of this period in America (14) Here in Southern Californiathe eyes are focused upon you as they are upon no other region. The present rapid growth of Southern California, the influx into it of a population which is twice as largely Anglo-Saxon as that existingin New York . . .make this a time and this a place of exceptional opportunity.
Luckily for Cal Tech and the U.S. such non-Anglos as Eiustein, Nobel laureates Albert Abraham Michelson, and Henrik A. Lorentz, meteorologist Vilhelm Bjerknes, theoretical physicists Paul Epstein, Richard Tolman, and J. Robert Oppenheimer, and aerodynamicist Theodore von KBrmin
50fU. S. working chemists, 1.1% are black and 15.2% are women [American Chemical Society survey, 1985, reported in Chem Ena. News. 28 Aoril 1986. o 721. See also Commission on professionals in ~cienc;and ~echklo&.Professional Women and Minorities: A Manpower [sic] Data Resource Service: Washington, DC. 1986; Science 1986, 232, 661.
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Journal of Chemical Education
found their way onto the faculty. Whether these greats were elevated to the status of Honorary AngloSaxons by the Institute before hiring is not known (14). Just in case one is tempted to believe that rank ethnic biases such as these are only t o be found in the American past, we have the present "problem" of the immigration of our Latinneighbors south of the border. Does anyone believe thatthere would be a problemif it were Norwegians, Swedes, or Danes who were wading across the Rio Grande? Racial and Cultural By any sort of principle of the equal distribution of talent in all human groups, it is clear that we are missing a lot of chemists and their chemistry (15L5While afull discussion of racial and sexual biases currently existing in the United States is assuredly beyond the scope of this Journal and may, moreover, require what the lawyers call a "change in venue," a few points can be made with ease. Returning to that preface to 1066and All That once again, (6) surely the most unmemorahle chunk in all of history is that part of the story dealing withnon-Europeans. Not more than four out of Toynhee's 20 or so civilizations (15) have been the work of the unpigmented peoples of the West. I t is in the East that most of these civilizations were born and flourished. Yet who among us remembers even the names? What history of the Orient does exist for usis concerned with either the impact of Europeans on Asian society or with the annearance of non-Euroneans as a threat to the existence of .. some part of l h n ~ p rThe . pnrorhial outlook of mmt western historians is exemulified in the number of Dares allotted in texts of "World ~ h x y to " the nonwhite p&es. The most elemental facts of noncaucasian history are often neglected in favor of the tedious doings of petty European princelings and prelates. There is a striking disproportion between the attention devoted to European expansion and colonization, on the one hand, and native civilizations themselves, on the other. For example, to us, the history of India is the history of British rule in India: Clive, Warren Hastings, Lord Curzon, the Sepoy Mutiny, and the Black Hole of Calcutta; the history of China is a collection of episodes involving Europeans: China's discovery by Marco Polo (what, indeed, was she discovered doine?). ., Treatv Ports. and the Boxer Rebellion. Concerning Japan we have the two visits by Admiral Perry. Events outside Europe seem to receive notice and are attrihuted importance in proportion to the connection they have with the historv of Western Eurove and America, little of which could mike an Oriental feelproud. For China (16): Perhaps it need hardly be said that China is better provided with original sources than any other Eastern and indeed most Western countries. ...the Chinese have one of the greatest historiographic traditions of the world. It is frequently possible to be sure not only of the year, hut also of the month, and even the day, when a certain event occurred. Yet, even in the absence of specific evidence, the view that non-European peoples have always constituted an unimportant part of humanity is much too pat. This simple view is compounded by dim recollections of awe-struck savages admiring a fountain pen held by one of the Tarzan twins; neonles eiven to treacherv and unnecessarv cmeltv, but able to c e s4ttered in theirVlargenumbers by small hands of native soldiery officered by Europeans; whole nations awaiting the coming of European administrators to bestow the hlessiues of Peace, Order. Justice, and True Religion. Much of the recollection can be traced to the worksof certain novelists, and Hollvwuod films have surely done their part. But even a little-reflection on what part of the history of the Orient is actually remembered is sufficient to show that a number of events simply refuse to fit neatly into this pattern
of Western superiority and Eastern backwardness. Most of us have heard of Genghis Khan and know that his followers threatened part of Europe for a time. Peoples of the Middle East durine one neriod also occu~iedlaree of the .. nortions . Iherinn Peninsula. Indeed, nun-b:uropeans have penetrated from the Pyrenees in the West uv to thc eates ot' Vienna in the East. 01course, we have come to thincof these invaders as barbarians (few invasions are genteel) and have used words such as horde to characterize them in their large numbers. Yet the invaders were prohahlvnever as numerous as the European defenders chose to imagine. What idea we do have of their numbers is derived from defeated generals whose dispatches had somehow to account for the coilapse of their own armies. But now the connection between technological advantage and military prowess is well established, and this connection is now recognized by political leaders who seek to endow invention and science in order to derive the benefit of increased militarv Dower. The ~ r i n c i ~involved le is not confined to the 20th >entury, and ancient conflicts as well were often resolved on the battlefield in favor of those who could utilize superior technology. Many examples are available from studies of the ereat battles of ancient times, and this suggests immediatel; the question of whether these incursions into European territory were not accompanied by the products of a superior technology. An affirmative answer here would he interesting for the light i t throws onto a general comparison of the two civilizations. There has perhaps been more contact between East and West than is generally recognized, and a fair amount of information is now available concerning these exchanges and how each side fared. In this connection a remarkable book called East and West ( 1 71 hasapucarcd from the hand ot'thesnme C. Northcote parkinson-already famous for his Parkinson's Law(s). Here the author argues for aview that the ascendencv of one side, then the other, has resulted in a "pistonlike gction" between the civilizations of East and West. Far from being a one-sided affair, the Orient, it is claimed, has had long pe& ods of supremacy, the last of which probably ended only a few centuries ago with the emergence of a renascent Europe. For the teacher of science it is necessary to ask whether this Asiatic suoremacv also carried with i t technoloeical sumemacy. Parkinson presents an argument so engaging that it deserves auotation in full. Describine the influence of the East on ~ L r o after ~ e the collapse o f k o m e (after = A. D. 4001, he says:
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. . t h e y [the Europeonsl irlt ahat can bedescribed asasupemtit i m x dread. Orrmrols were pos~rssedof horrible and occult pou ers, just such advantages, in fact, as all civilized people have over
their ignorant neighbors. Traces of this dread survive in Western attitudes toward Asia, more especially in popular fiction and melodramas. . . .The mental attitude involved is arelic of a oeriod nhm A~lnnrivilizationwas incontrsrabiy superior. O~ientalcneverdid have thpocnllt powers for which thry wrrrgiven credit.All thry had was a rcientific knowlrdge which s~rpassedWestern comprehension. The outbursts of oriental energy which brought Genghis Khan and his successors oenetratine into E u r o ~ eas far as Vienna and the ~ d r i a t i c - ( t h eMO&I Horde,'the Yellow Peril!) are instances where fanatical drive was married with technical competence and inventiveness of a high order. The Mongol hegemony in the early years of the Christian era owes its astonishing success in large part to the thorough mastery of the use of the horse as an article of military ordnance. The successive waves of invasion were spearheaded hy cavalry equipped with helmet, mail armor, round shield, lance, and sword. Infantry not only used the bow but also rode pillion with the cavalry. Stirrups allowed the cavalryman to transfer the impact of his lance from himself to the horse, while chain mail offered equal protection at a great saving in weight. Against the superiority of the armored
knieht, the foot soldier was equipped with the crossbow, and theintegration of these separate-dements into a comprehensive set of military tactics was well understood by non-Europeans by the time of the Crusades (and earlier (18)). While Europe wallowed deep in the Dark Ages, China was heine unified under the T'aneDvnastv. The neriod of stahility iH dated from the heginr&of t
