The Rise of Synthetic Chemistry

艾伦·洛克教授的研究侧重于法国的事件，但与德国有很强的比较维度，有望为诸如地方知识如何变得普遍、研究型学校如何行使（或未能行使）更广泛的影响;科学中民族风格的现实和意义;在追求科学中民族主义和国际主义压力的作用;以及社会文化和内部因素在科学思想和应用发展中的相互作用。 他是在研究法国和德国合成化学兴衰的背景下解决这些问题的。 现代化学的非凡力量--科学和技术意义上的“力量”--是建立在有机化学的合成方法上的，但我们对这些方法在历史上是如何发展的理解仍然处于相当初级的状态。一提到这个主题，我们就很容易想到两个小插曲：一是弗里德里希·沃勒（Friedrich Wohler）和他的学生赫尔曼·科尔贝（Hermann Kolbe）关于化学合成的早期经典例子;二是几年后马塞林·贝特洛（Marcellin Berthelot）对一系列此类反应的探索，最终在1860年发表了开创性的著作《合成有机化学》（Chimie organique fondee sur la synthese）。因此，从国家的角度来看，德国和法国的科学家都密切参与了这一领域的诞生。具有讽刺意味的是，贝特洛这本书的出版日期正是德国人开始在合成有机化学领域发挥极其强大影响力的时刻。德国化学，尤其是有机化学，在19世纪50年代达到了一个起飞点，这一运动在法国并不流行。 具有讽刺意味的是，德国人的成功可能与他们迅速采用法国开始的改革有关，即奥古斯特·洛朗和查尔斯·格哈特倡导的新原子量和统一分子量。这些改革导致了一种由结构有机理论指导的强有力的化学的产生。然而，在改革的发源地法国，情况并非如此，这提供了一个有趣的难题。这两个国家的不同经验在很大程度上是由社会、文化和制度因素造成的，因为法国人可以平等地获得19世纪50年代早期的科学出版物，而这些出版物很快就改变了他们的德国邻居。那么，究竟是什么原因导致法国与德国的经验如此不同呢？这是本项目要探讨的核心问题。 通过探索这个中心问题，洛克教授承诺阐明许多决定国家在科学和技术方面继续领先的问题。

Professor Alan Rocke research, focusing on events in France but having a strong comparative dimension toward Germany, promises to shed important new light on such general questions as how local knowledge becomes universal; how research schools exercise (or fail to exercise) influence more broadly; the reality and significance of national styles in science; the operation of nationalist and internationalist pressures in the pursuit of science; and the interaction of socio-cultural and internal factors in the development of scientific ideas and applications. He is addressing these issues in the context of his study of the rise and fall of synthetic chemistry in France and Germany. The remarkable power of modern chemistry--"power" intended in both a scientific and a technological sense--is founded on synthetic methods in organic chemistry, but our understanding of how those methods developed historically is still in a fairly rudimentary state. Two episodes are apt to come to mind upon mention of this subject: early classic examples of chemical syntheses by Friedrich Wohler and his student Hermann Kolbe; and the exploration of an entire series of such reactions by Marcellin Berthelot a few years later, culminating in his path breaking work of 1860, Chimie organique fondee sur la synthese. Viewed thus in national terms, both German and French scientists were intimately involved with the birth of this field. It is ironic that the publication date of Berthelot's book marked the very point when the Germans began to exert extraordinarily powerful influence in synthetic organic chemistry. German chemistry, especially organic, attained a sort of take-off point in the 1850s, a movement that was not paralleled in France. Ironically, the Germans' success can be related to their rapid adoption of reforms begun in France, namely the new atomic weights and unified molecular magnitudes championed by Auguste Laurent and Charles Gerhardt. These reforms led to the creation of a powerful sort of chemistry gu ided by structural organic theory. Not so, however, in the home of the reforms, France, which provides an interesting conundrum. The differential experience in the two countries must have been due largely to social, cultural, and institutional factors, for the French had equal access to the same scientific publications of the early 1850s that so quickly converted their German neighbors. What was it, then, about the French that led to such differences from the German experience? This is the central question for the project to explore. By exploring this central question, Professor Rocke promises to elucidate many of the issues that determine continuing leadership among nations in science and technology.