The CHEMISTRY STUDENT STILL NEEDS a READING KNOWLEDGE of GERMAN ODEN E. SHEPPARD Montana State College, Bozeman, Montana
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OME students who are'planning to make chemistry the field of their life work are surprised and somewhat dismayed in certain cases to find that German is included in most undergraduate curricula and is required in practically all graduate work in chemistry. Some students feel that the growth of chemistry in the United States since the World War has obviated the need for studying German. They feel that all worthwhile chemical work published in German or any other language will certainly soon be translated into English. I t is difficult for the beginner to realize that many chemical works published in German, e. g., Beilstein's "Handbuch," have never been translated into English and are not likely to be. The beginner finds it difficult to understand that the rather limited number of copies of many works of this kind that can be sold would make a translation an exorbitantly priced work that very few could purchase. Certain students think that even though much chemical work is published in German few if any American
chemists will ever have occasion or need to read that. They do not realize that even under present conditions striking developments may be made practical commercial successes abroad before there is much if any knowledge of the work among chemists in the United States. A recent paper entitled "Ionic silver sterilization" (1)illustrates this, as 20 of the22 bibliography references are in German, the 21st was published in India, and the 22nd in the U. S. A., though the method has been a commercial success for several years. In order to secure objective data indicating the use American chemists are today making of German it was decided to examine the literature references given in the 1933 volume of the Journal of the American Chemical Society as to language. In order to do this most conveniently all literature citations were first classified by periodicals. There were 5410 literature citations to 364 different periodicals. Most of these periodicals publish papers in only one language so the task of converting this periodical classification list to a language
list was quite simple except for the relatively few periodicals such as Helwetica Chimica Acta which publishes papers in English, German, Italian, or French. As these latter account for so few of the total citations and only a small part of the periodicals concerned were available, it was decided not to look up each of these papers separately to find out what language it was published in. Most of the 81 citations in this class no doubt appeared in German, but some may have appeared in English, French, Dutch, Russian, J a p a n e x a n d even in Latin. (Annales Academiae Scientiarum Fennicae.) Table 1 shows the classification by languages. The miscellaneous group contains a few citations where the language of the publication or of all of the papers of the publication was doubtful. In general, the 1931 list of periodicals abstracted by Chemical Abstracts was used as a guide. TABLE 1 * L*No"*os 0s m a Llrsa*r"aa
English German French Italian Russian Spanish
J.panere Periodicals publishing in English. .French, German, or other language Miscellaneous
c,r*rroas Number
% of T o l d
2494 2104 424 63 40 10 9
46.1 38.8 7.8 1.1 0.7 0.2 0.2
81 185 5410
1.5 3.4 99.8
1. J. A m . Chem. Sac. 2. Brr. 3. J . Chcm. Soc. (London) 4. Ann. 5. 2.DhWik. Cham. 6 . J . Phys. Chrm. 7. Phyi. Re". 8. Ind. Ene. Chem. 9. Z . onorg. o11gam. Chrm. 10. compt. rend. 11. R c c ,"a" chin. 12. P m c . Roy. Sok. (London) 13. J. B i d Chrm. 14. J . Drokl. Chcm. 15. T r o w Farodoy Soc. 16. Bull. roc. chin. 17. Hclv Chim. Acio 18. Monotrk. 19. Chcm. Rcu
887 751 311 305 276 157 139 120 114 106 103 88 79 78 71 67 61 60 56
20. Am. Chcm. J . 21. 2.Phvsik 22. Gozr. rhim. ilol. 23. 2. Eleclrochcnr. 24. P h w i k . Z. 25. Phil. Mag. 26. 1. Russ. Phgs-Ckcm. Sac. 27. Nolurc 28. Ann. Physik 29. Z. Dhyrial. Chrm. 30. Chrm. Zcnlr. 31. Ann. chim. phyr. 32. Pmc. Nnl. Acod Sci. 33. Chemical Abstracts 34. Noturwirrrnsrhoflm 35. Biochrm. 2. 36. Ann. chim. 37. Biarhem. J .
20 periodicals as determined by Gross are among the 20 most important periodicals as determined by this 1933 study and the first 4 still maintain their same relative order of importance. Ann. Physik. ranks seventh in the Gross list and 25th in this when A. C. S. publications are omitted and Phil. Mag. ranks 22nd here hut 18th in the earlier study. Ann. chim. ranks 11th in the Gross list and 28th in this but this difference is probably explained by assuming that Gross added citations to both Ann. chim. phys. and Ann. chim. and called them one. Physical Review ranks 20th on the Gross list but now ranks 6th. This is one of the most striking changes in relative position. Helw. Chim. Acta, Rec. traw. chim., and Trans. Faraday Soc. now appear among the 20 most important but occupied ranks much lower in the Gross list. Many writers (4) have at various times emphasized the need chemistry students have for German and it is important to know that this need is apparently diminishing little if any despite the fact that the percentage of German papers abstracted by Chemical Abstracts showed approximately a 6Y0 decline from 1913 to 1923 (5). This decline probably means that the number of papers published in each language is not as good a measure of the need of the chemist for the language as a study based on papers cited. T* writer feels that every student of chemistry should fully realize that German is nearly as important a tool subject for him as mathematics and physics, and that if he has not studied German before college he should take it up during his freshman and sophomore years. At Montana State College candidates for the B.S. degree in chemistry are required to take two years of German and one of,French if they have bad no previous training in these languages. It is highly desirable that the German language requirement be met in high-school work but very few high schools in Montana offer German.
It is to be noted that over a third (887) of the English citations were to the Journal of the American Chemical Society itself. This preponderance of citations to earlier issues of the journal examined is to be expected and one should realize that this journal is probably given undue prominence in the list. It is interesting to note that an approximate classification of over 500 citations in the current Berichte der deutschen chemGchen Gesellschnft indicated that nearly 90Y0 of all citations are in German and a tabulation of nearly 300 citations from the 1934 Journal of the Chemical Society (London) showed 547& ip English and 38% in German. The writer believes that German workers generally have few American puhlicatfons available and are less inclined generally to follow the English literature because the German literature is so extensive in itself. However, we find Germans (2) bemoaning the fact that the chemistry students do not give enough attention to the study of foreign languages, especially English. I t is interesting to note the implications of this study as to the comparative utility of various foreign journals to American chemists as determined by the earlier study of Gross ( 3 ) . Table 2 tabulates all the periodiLITERATURE CITED cals to which 21 or more citations were made in the order of number of citations. (1) BRANDES, Ind. Eng. Ckcnz., 26,9624 (1934). Z.angeu. Chn.,32, 327-8 (1919). In Table 2 probably citations for Ann. chim. h y s . (2) GROSSMAN, Science, 66, 385-9 (IQz7). (3) and Ann. chim. should be added together, since the fist (4) W. A. NOYES, J . Am. Chem. Soc.. 42, 2099-116 (1920): of these periodicals was divided into Ann. chim. and E. E. REID, "Introduction to organic research," D. Van Nostrand Co., New York City, 1924; CRANEAND PATAnn. phys. in 1914. TERSON, "The literature of chemistry," John Wiley & If we exch;de publications of the American Chemical Sons, Inc., New York City, 1927. Society as was done by Gross, 17 of the most important (5) CRANEAND PATTERSON, ~ O C . it., p. 6.
