When a Daring Chemistry Meets a Boring Chemistry: The Reception of Mendeleev’s Periodic System in Sweden

The reception of Mendeleev’s periodic system in Sweden was not a dramatic episode. The system was accepted almost without discussion, but at the same time with no exclamation marks or any other outbursts of enthusiasm. There are but a few weak short-lived critical remarks. That was all. I will argue that the acceptance of the system had no overwhelming effect on chemical practice in Sweden. At most, it strengthened its characteristics. It is actually possible to argue that chemistry in Sweden was more essential for the periodic system than the other way around. My results might therefore suggest that we perhaps have to reevaluate the role of Mendeleev’s system in the history of chemistry. Chemistry in Sweden at the end of the nineteenth century can be characterized as a classifying science, with chemists very skilled in analysis, and as mainly an atheoretical science, which treated theories at most only as hypothesis—the slogan of many chemists being “facts persist, theories vanish.” Thanks to these characteristics, by the end of the nineteenth century, chemistry in Sweden had developed into, it must be said, a rather boring chemistry. This is obviously not to say that it is boring to study such a chemistry. Rather, it gives us an example of how everyday science, a part of science too often neglected but a part that constitutes the bulk of all science done, is carried out. One purpose of this study is to see how a theory, considered to be important in the history of chemistry, influenced everyday science. One might ask what happened when a daring chemistry met a boring chemistry. What happened when a theory, which had been created by a chemist who has been described as “not a laboratory chemist,” met an atheoretical experimental science of hard laboratory work and, as was said, the establishment of facts? Furthermore, could we learn something about the role of the periodic system per se from the study of such a meeting? Mendeleev’s system has often been considered important for teaching, and his attempts to write a textbook are often taken as the initial step in the chain of thoughts that led to the periodic system.

Mendeleev’s Periodic Classification and Law in French Chemistry Textbooks

The most striking feature of the diffusion of Mendeleev’s system in France is that his great achievement prompted no real debates, no controversy among French academic chemists. It is not that his work was totally ignored. Rather, it was integrated as a non-event in the daily work focused on the discovery and characterization of chemical elements thanks to new techniques (spectroscopy, crystallization, and so on). In science journals Mendeleev’s system attracted attention only insofar as it could lead to the discovery of new chemical elements. After briefly mentioning when and how Mendeleev’s ideas were presented in French primary, secondary, and higher education chemistry textbooks and mentioned in official programs, we will try to understand the reasons for preferring alternative criteria for classification in chemistry textbooks. In addition to the explicit arguments advanced by those who mentioned Mendeleev’s proposals, we will attempt to interpret the silence that most textbook authors kept. In a third section, we will symmetrically focus on the small group of chemists who promoted Mendeleev’s periodic classification and try to disentangle their motivations and modes of appropriation. We will then conclude that, far from being a form of resistance to Mendeleev’s specific system, the overall skepticism expressed in French chemistry textbooks was the expression of an enduring statu quo resulting from a long debate over the best chemical classification in educational milieus. In September 1879 the Department of Haute-Marne organized at the Hôtel de la Préfecture de Chaumont an exposition scolaire aimed at exhibiting the innovative activities developed by teachers and students of local primary school institutions. It was intended to contribute to the reform of primary education following the trauma caused by the defeat in the war against Prussia. As one of its organizers claimed, “it is primary instruction, and its patriotic direction, which made the strength of our enemies. It should make ours.” It was in this context of educational reform and post-war tensions that we found the first reference to didactic use of Mendeleev’s periodic system in France.

Popular Science, Textbooks, and Scientists: The Periodic Law in Italy

This essay deals with an issue that has never before been the focus of attention in the field of research on the history of chemistry in Italy: the diffusion of Mendeleev’s periodic system in our nation. In the following text we will analyze the situation in the period preceding the arrival of Mendeleev’s theory in Italy with regard to the matter of classifying elements. By doing so, it will be possible to demonstrate that—despite the superficiality and lack of accuracy of certain studies—Italian chemistry was already very willing to consider new proposals relating to the classification of elements. We will then attempt to illustrate how Mendeleev’s work not only attracted the attention of the most renowned Italian chemists, such as Augusto Piccini and Giacomo Ciamician, but also became widely used in university texts and secondary school textbooks. In order to understand the classification criteria for elements adopted by Italian chemists before Mendeleev and therefore the cultural terrain the law of periodicity was to take root in, it would be better to refer to a number of texts used widely for teaching in universities. We will examine four of these, published between 1819 and 1867. In all these texts, the term “simple bodies” appears, with the expression “simple substances” used less frequently, while Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier (1743–94), in his 1789 Traité élémentaire de chimie (Traité thereafter), uses the same term “simple substances” or “simple substances … which may be considered as the elements of bodies.” It is interesting to note that Vincenzo Dandolo’s Italian translation (first edition 1792) uses the expression “sostanze semplici,” interpreting quite literally the Frenchman’s choice of term. Thirty years after publication of the Traité, Antonio Santagata (1774–1858), professor of general chemistry at the Pontificia Università di Bologna, published his Lezioni di chimica elementare [Lessons in elementary chemistry], derived from Lezioni di chimica elementare: applicata alla medicina e alle arti [Lessons in Elementary Chemistry: Applied to Medicine and the Arts] (Bologna, 1804), written by his predecessor in the university chair, Pellegrino Salvigni (1777–1841).

The Periodic System and Its Influence on Research and Education in Germany between 1870 and 1910

In 1895 Karl Seubert (1851–1942) published some of the most important papers by Lothar Meyer (1830–1895) and Dmitrii I. Mendeleev (1834–1907) on the so-called natural system of elements. He wrote: . . . At first it seems incomprehensible to today’s reader of these essays that the general reception of the system was delayed for many years even though it was presented in a final form and its benefit for theoretical, practical and pedagogical purposes had been explained in detail. . . . Seubert discovered a lack of interest in the field of inorganic chemistry, but also an inadequate description of the system. He remarked that Meyer’s explanations were too short, and Mendeleev’s too circuitous. The system became a resounding success when the deductions which were drawn from it were confirmed by experiments in rapid succession: the selection of the atomic weight with respect to the known number of equivalents, as in the case of indium and uranium; the change in the order, regardless of the valid atomic weights, such as the platinum group; and, last but not least, the prediction of new elements and their chemical properties which were proved true with the discoveries of scandium, gallium and germanium quickly one after the other. The brilliant vision and the boldness of Mendelejeff led the system to its unquestioned victory. Seubert was Meyer’s colleague for many years. From 1878 to 1895, they worked together on the redetermination of atomic weights and published several papers on this topic. Seubert was the first biographer to write about Meyer and was responsible for publishing his most important papers. Nevertheless, Seubert regarded Mendeleev’s role in the discovery of the periodic system to be of greater importance. This is shown by the last sentence of the previously quoted passage. Seubert’s remark elicits two questions: First, why did Seubert consider Meyer’s role in the discovery of the periodic system as less important? Second, was its reception in Germany truly delayed? These questions are connected to several different factors: politics within German chemistry; didactic approaches to teaching chemistry in schools and universities; and the role of the periodic system in the public sphere.

Introduction

Even though there have already been many studies of the reception of scientific discoveries and theories, only a few discoveries have been systematically examined from a comparative perspective, in particular Darwin’s theory of evolution in biology and Einstein’s relativity theory in physics. In the field of chemistry, the periodic system of the elements is a good candidate for such comparative reception studies. Although the discovery of the periodic system and its later history have generated numerous inquiries, its reception has received only partial or scanty attention. In his noted paper published in 1996, the American historian of science Stephen G. Brush explored the role that successful predictions and accommodation of known facts played in persuading scientists to accept scientific discoveries. He systematically examined textbooks and comprehensive chemistry reference works, observing that, “[the] number of explicit references to the periodic law to be found in late nineteenth-century chemistry journals is small and fluctuates irregularly.” Relying on a survey of textbooks and reference works written between 1871 and 1890 and existing in American libraries, he concluded that the periodic law had been generally accepted in the United States and Britain by 1890. In a footnote to the same paper, he suggested the need to extend this study of texts to other countries, especially Germany and France. In fact, two years before Brush’s paper was published, Ludmilla Nekoval-Chikhaoui had completed her dissertation on the diffusion of Mendeleev’s periodic classification in France. She studied this subject as part of a project on the diffusion of scientific knowledge from the second half of the nineteenth century to the early twentieth century. Basing her examination on scientific journals and chemistry books, Nekoval-Chikhaoui analyzed the diffusion of the periodic system in the French scientific community. She also surveyed the introduction of periodic classification in higher and secondary education based on an analysis of chemistry textbooks, higher education courses, and public education programs. At the end of her dissertation, she called to conduct a comparative analysis of the diffusion of Mendeleev’s discovery in different European countries.

Chemical Classifications, Textbooks, and the Periodic System in Nineteenth-Century Spain

The periodic system is closely linked to chemical pedagogy by many different ways. It is commonly accepted that Mendeleev discovered the periodic law while he was attempting to organize the chapters of a general chemistry textbook for his students at St. Petersburg University. The omnipresence of periodic tables in classrooms and textbooks throughout the twentieth century seems to confirm the decisive impact of Mendeleev’s work in chemistry teaching. Thus, one might assume that the advent of the periodic classification was followed by a revolution in late nineteenth-century chemistry classrooms. However, the papers included in this volume have found scarce evidence for a profound transformation of this kind in chemistry education. Our main aim here is to suggest some explanations for this apparent paradox by exploring the rather peripheral context of nineteenth-century Spain. Our approach is based on new historiographical trends in two interrelated areas: the history of science teaching and the circulation of knowledge. Teaching is no longer regarded by historians as a second-rate activity for scientists, but as a creative context in which new knowledge is produced thanks to the complex interaction of many historical forces and agents. Historians who subscribe to this trend also challenge the common view of textbook writing as repetitive, uninspiring work. Mendeleev was certainly not the first teacher to address the problem of finding an accurate classification for chemistry textbooks. In fact, when he prepared his Principles of Chemistry in 1868, there was already a long tradition of chemistry textbooks dating back to the seventeenth century, and many arrangements had been adopted and discussed by Mendeleev’s recent predecessors. Many mid-nineteenth-century textbooks devoted entire chapters to chemical classifications, in which the author presented the debates on artificial and natural classifications and added their own suggestions. One of these books was written in 1855 by Auguste Cahours (1813–1891), a professor of chemistry in Paris, and was translated into Russian with the aid of Mendeleev, just a few years before his work on the periodic system.

Chemical Classification and the Response to the Periodic Law of Elements in Japan in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

The year 1868 is usually considered to be the beginning of modern Japan. In that year the Tokugawa government, a feudal samurai government in Edo (today’s Tokyo), was replaced by a modern imperial government (initially based in Kyoto, the old imperial capital) at a time of internal crisis and the fear of colonization by European imperial powers. This revolutionary political change is named the Meiji Restoration because the ancient imperial system was nominally restored under Emperor Meiji. The new government began as a mixture of ancient Japanese and modern Western imperial systems, but it soon became a completely Westernized government, which adopted a policy of full-fledged modernization. However, the introduction of Western science had already started long before the Meiji Restoration. During the Edo Period, the Tokugawa Shogunate (1603–1867) strictly controlled overseas trade and the Netherlands was the only European country with which Japan had diplomatic relationship from the middle of the seventeenth century until 1853. In the second half of the eighteenth century some books in Dutch on science, technology, and medicine were imported into Japan. For the introduction of Western medicine, physicians played an important role. During the Edo Period there was a class system: the samurai class (warrior) controlled the common people in villages and towns. All the professions were considered to be hereditary. However, physicians could move rather freely along the social ladder (hierarchy). If physicians were employed by feudal lords, they became accepted as members of the samurai. There was a reform movement among physicians during the eighteenth century. In 1754 Yamawaki Toyo (1706–62), a physician in Kyoto, received official permission to inspect the anatomy of a human body, using a cadaver of a condemned criminal, after he had inspected otters (a small animal with four webbed feet), the structure of which was quite different from Chinese medicine’s teaching. After him physicians were allowed to inspect condemned criminals’ bodies.

Echoes from the Reception of Periodic Classification in Portugal

This essay attempts to evidence the remaining echoes of the reception of Mendeleev’s periodic classification in Portugal during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The research involved the identification of remaining traces at different higher-level teaching institutions as well as with books, textbooks, and programs from beginner’s level to advanced level that appeared in the period between 1876 and 1904. Following the institutionalization of chemistry as an independent scientific dis­cipline in Portugal, after the 1772 reform of Coimbra University, the 1844 reform of the university serves as a breath of fresh air in terms of the study of chemistry as being split into different chemistry specialties, an action much related to developments abroad. By 1851 the Coimbra professor J. A. Simões de Carvalho (1822–1902) was opposing chemistry being taught at the university with French textbooks. Instead, he wrote a modernized text, which included recent research for chemical philosophy lessons and advocated a much greater “attention to the day-to-day communications in scientific journals and newsletters than to more complete and extensive manuals.” In the two decades immediately before the period we are interested in, there was a resurgence of the country’s economy and some developments also affected the still unique university. In this context, reform of curricula took place and a positivist wind blew through the faculties, starting in the Law Faculty and then spreading to the other faculties with a symptomatic decline in the influence of the Canonical Faculty. The Law Faculty had the biggest number of students and several of its members took up higher administrative or governmental positions. The intellectual atmosphere of the Faculty of Natural Philosophy was deeply impregnated with positivism, whereby it was intended to regenerate the sciences body. The program of sending some of its members abroad was reactivated, to keep them up to date with the modern experimental sciences, particularly chemistry, while some foreign staff came to work in the university.

Ignored, Disregarded, Discarded? On the Introduction of the Periodic System in Norwegian Periodicals and Textbooks, c. 1870–1930s

The above quote from P. K. Hustad (1878–?), a textbook author and teacher at an agricultural school in mid-Norway, might at first glance be taken as an argument for the use of the periodic system in the teaching of chemistry, as opposed to introducing element by element as was the tradition before the periodic system was presented and used in textbooks. Hustad, however, did not mention the periodic system at all in his text. As I will demonstrate in this chapter, Hustad’s book was not exceptional in this respect: Even though university professor Thorstein Hallager Hiortdahl (1839–1925) introduced the periodic system in his textbook in 1888 and some textbook authors continued this tradition into the 1890s, others ignored the periodic system completely as late as the 1920s and ‘30s. This contrasts sharply with Stephen Brush’s conclusion that by the late 1880s the periodic system was “widely accepted” in America and Central Europe, and that most textbooks in America and Britain after this time discussed the periodic system. In fact, the periodic system received little attention in Norway, not only compared to the United States and Central Europe, but compared to the rest of Scandinavia as well. The aim of the present volume is to compare how the periodic system was received in different countries. Answering such a comprehensive question, is, of course, challenging given the limited selection of printed sources. Quite often the sources that could shed light on the kinds of discussions that took place between relevant actors are either lost or inaccessible. As a consequence, I have chosen to look at how the periodic system was presented in Norwegian periodicals and to what degree—if any—it was introduced and/or used in Norwegian chemistry textbooks during the years between 1870 and the 1930s. I have based my investigation on textbooks available in the Norwegian national library database4 and other texts of which I was aware, as well as on the most common Norwegian chemistry and science periodicals.

Reception and Early Use of the Periodic System: The Case of Denmark

In this essay I examine how the periodic system or table was introduced in Denmark in the late nineteenth century, how it was used in chemical textbooks, and the way it was developed by a few of the country’s scientists. Danish chemists had in the period an international orientation, which helped them in getting acquainted with Mendeleev’s system and appreciating its strength. The main reason they felt the system to be attractive was its predictive force, especially its prediction of new elements and ability to accommodate new chemical knowledge. I pay particular attention to the work of Hans Peter Jørgen Julius Thomsen (1826–1909), which is an important example of “neo-Proutean” attempts to understand the periodic system in terms of internally structured atoms. Moreover, I direct attention to Mendeleev’s connection to Danish science by way of his membership in the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters. Thomsen’s speculations of composite atoms as the ultimate cause of the periodicity of the elements were vindicated by the new developments in atomic theory. A semi-quantitative explanation was offered by Niels Bohr (1885–1962) in 1913, and in subsequent refinements of his atomic model he came close to an explanation of the entire periodic system. The essay briefly considers Bohr’s work on the periodic system in its local context, including its relation to the earlier ideas of Thomsen. In order to appreciate how the periodic system of the elements was received in Denmark, it will be helpful to provide some basic information of the country’s chemical landscape. In the period here considered, approximately 1870–1920, Denmark was a small country, scientifically and culturally almost completely dominated by its capital, Copenhagen. As far as chemical research and education was concerned, the most important institutions were the University of Copenhagen, the Polytechnical College, the Royal Veterinary and Agricultural College, and the Pharmaceutical College, all located in Copenhagen. Although the number of chemists grew rapidly during this period, only a few of them were trained at the University and even fewer had an interest in the more theoretical aspects of the chemical sciences.