Physical Chemistry from Ostwald to Pauling

by Servos, John W.

• ISBN13: 9780691026145
• ISBN10: 0691026149
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1996-03-18
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

John Servos explains the emergence of physical chemistry in America by presenting a series of lively portraits of such pivotal figures as Wilhelm Ostwald, A. A. Noyes, G. N. Lewis, and Linus Pauling, and of key institutions, including MIT, the University of California at Berkeley, and Caltech. In the early twentieth century, physical chemistry was a new hybrid science, the molecular biology of its time. The names of its progenitors were familiar to everyone who was scientifically literate; studies of aqueous solutions and of chemical thermodynamics had transformed scientific knowledge of chemical affinity. By exploring the relationship of the discipline to industry and to other sciences, and by tracing the research of its leading American practitioners, Servos shows how physical chemistry was eclipsed by its own offspring--specialties like quantum chemistry.

Author Biography

John W. Servos is Professor of History at Amherst College

Table of Contents

List of Figures	p. ix
List of Tables	p. xi
Preface	p. xiii
Acknowledgments	p. xix
List of Note Abbreviations	p. xxi
Modern Chemistry Is in Need of Reform	p. 3
Chemistry and the Cartography of Science	p. 6
Chemistry in the Minor Key: Physicalist Traditions in Nineteenth-Century Chemistry	p. 11
Ambitions and Ideas Convergent: Ostwald, van't Hoff, and Arrhenius	p. 20
The New Chemistry of the Ionists	p. 39
Physical Chemistry from Europe to America	p. 46
The Diffusion of Physical Chemistry	p. 46
Ostwald and the Americans	p. 53
Charting the Expansion of the Discipline	p. 70
American Graduate Centers	p. 74
Why Physical Chemistry Prospered in America	p. 87
King Arthur's Court: Arthur A. Noyes and the Research Laboratory of Physical Chemistry	p. 100
Poverty and Promise: Boston Tech at Century's End	p. 100
The Makings of a Physical Chemist: Arthur Amos Noyes at Newburyport and MIT	p. 103
A Massachusetts Yankee Builds a Court	p. 110
From Processes to Structures: The Anomaly of Strong Electrolytes and the Problem of the Chemical Bond	p. 120
Chemical Thermodynamics: From Activities to a Table of Free Energies	p. 138
The Research Laboratory of Physical Chemistry in Retrospect	p. 150
The Phase Ruler: Wilder D. Bancroft and His Agenda for Physical Chemistry	p. 156
Wilder Bancroft: Gentleman Chemist	p. 159
Bancroft at Cornell	p. 163
Bancroft's Conception of Physical Chemistry	p. 168
The Appeal of the Phase Rule	p. 174
The Use and Abuse of the Phase Rule	p. 183
Bancroft Redux	p. 194
Physical Chemistry in the "New World of Science"	p. 202
The Integration of Science and the Industrial Order	p. 204
The Integration of Physical Chemistry and Other Sciences	p. 220
The Integration of Physical Chemistry into the University: Chemistry at California	p. 238
From Physical Chemistry to Chemical Physics	p. 251
The Once and Future King: A. A. Noyes from MIT to CIT	p. 253
Chemical Engineers, Physical Chemists, and the Struggle for MIT	p. 254
Caltech: From Base Camp to Temple	p. 263
Chemistry at Caltech	p. 269
Linus Pauling: From Student to Teacher	p. 275
A Dissenter's Decline	p. 299
From Phase Ruler to Colloid Chemist	p. 300
Bancroft's Journal and American Physical Chemists	p. 308
The End of Bancroft's Editorship and the Birth of the Journal of Chemical Physics	p. 315
Bancroft and the Traditions of Physical Chemistry	p. 321
Notes	p. 325
Index	p. 391
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