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Book & Media Reviews Cathedrals of Science: The Personalities and Rivalries That Made Modern Chemistry by Patrick Coffey Oxford University Press: New York, 2008, ISBN 978-0195321340, xix+379 pp, $29.95 reviewed by Jeffrey Kovac
Cathedrals of Science is a selective history of the development of physical chemistry from 1880 to 1950 focusing on several of the major figures in that story: Svante Arrhenius, Walther Nernst, Fritz Haber, Linus Pauling, and especially G. N. Lewis and Irving Langmuir. The first half of the subtitle describes the essence of the book because Coffey emphasizes the personal rivalries between the major characters in the story, but the second half is misleading; there is much more to modern chemistry than physical chemistry. Even within physical chemistry, the treatment is not complete. Thermodynamics, ionic solutions, bonding and structure, and surface chemistry, areas in which the major figures worked, are examined in detail, but other areas, such as spectroscopy, chemical kinetics, and statistical mechanics, are barely mentioned. By limiting his scope, Coffey is able to tell a compelling and revealing story of the real world of science, both the greatness and the pettiness of the men and women who make up the community of scientists. Physical chemistry began in Europe with the “ionists”— Arrhenius, Ostwald, and van’t Hoff—who created the modern theory of electrolytes. Their story opens the book. Chapter 2 introduces the two American figures, Lewis and Langmuir, whose contributions and contrasting personalities are the major theme of the narrative. The conflict between Nernst and Haber over the synthesis of nitrogen and the development of the Haber Bosch process in chapter 3 almost completes the cast. Pauling, of course, comes in later, primarily through his battle with the English mathematician Dorothy Wrinch over the structure of proteins, a conflict in which Langmuir also played a role. The strength of this book is its treatment of the human side of science. Coffey brings the major figures to life, both as scientists and people. As the subtitle implies, he emphasizes the conflicts. One of the major themes is the Nobel prize, which many of the figures in the book, with the notable exception of Lewis, won. As an early laureate and a member of the Nobel committee for physics and a defacto member of the committee for chemistry, Arrhenius, who was a contentious man, had an extraordinary influence on who won the prize and used that influence to try to sabotage the nomination of his enemies,
Cheryl Baldwin Frech University of Central Oklahoma Edmond, OK 73034
delaying the award to Nernst for 15 years. Coffey discusses at great length the question of why Lewis, one of the most influential physical chemists of his generation, never won the Nobel prize. His wellresearched and thoughtful account illuminates the Nobel process in which personalities play as large a role as science. Ultimately, however, G. N. Lewis, the brooding intuitive genius, is the dominant figure in the book that begins and ends with his death in a Berkeley laboratory in 1946. Although Lewis’s scientific contributions were significant, he was a difficult personality. A loner, Lewis isolated himself at Berkeley where he built a world-class department revolving around his own interests, but essentially excluding areas of chemistry that he did not like, most notably organic chemistry. Thin skinned, Lewis made enemies and held grudges. A poor speaker, he avoided attending scientific meetings. Intellectually restless, he switched fields often, completely abandoning one field for another. As Coffey notes, Lewis is a textbook example of how not to win the Nobel prize but his deep insights profoundly influenced modern chemistry in ways that even he didn’t imagine. Cathedrals of Science is an excellent, if selective, overview of the development of physical chemistry. Although serious students of the history of chemistry will find little that is new in this book, it is ideal for chemistry faculty and students who want to know more about the history of physical chemistry. The descriptions of the scientific advances are both accurate and accessible to undergraduates and the stories of the scientists, their discoveries and their rivalries are engaging. It is a book I will recommend to colleagues, students, and friends. Supporting JCE Online Material
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Jeffrey Kovac is a member of the Department of Chemistry, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996-1600; jkovac@ utk.edu.
© Division of Chemical Education • www.JCE.DivCHED.org • Vol. 86 No. 3 March 2009 • Journal of Chemical Education
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