The Chemistry Chronicles Derek Lowe Relishes a Celebration of the Lab on Its Long March Through Time

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LABORATORY HISTORY The chemistry chronicles Derek Lowe relishes a celebration of the lab on its long march through time.

sk non-scientists to many large laboratories, now picture a laboratory, completely forgotten. and the odds are that The nineteenth century saw Athey will imagine the kind of perhaps the greatest number of space that a contemporary changes in laboratory layout, TARKER/BRIDGEMAN chemist would work in, com- as new instruments such as plete with lab bench, fume Bunsen burners and new styles cupboard, sink and shelves of of working, including team glassware. Chemistry was prob- research, proliferated. Much ably the first of the sciences to of the book focuses on this era. get a room of its own, and in The pace speeds up noticeably The Matter Factory, Peter Mor- in the twentieth century, prob- ris, keeper of research projects ably because the major features at London’s Science Museum, of the modern lab were already offers the first book-length largely in place, down to the treatment of how this happened pegboard over the sink for dry- and what has changed in labs ing glassware. over the years. Today, one chemistry lab Laboratory history is tends to look very much like inseparable from the history another. In my own career, of chemistry. It takes us from I have ‘lived’ in at least 14 scientific instrumentation Antoine Lavoisier was central to the eighteenth-century chemical revolution. labs, and their similarities are to teaching, from the disci- much more numerous than pline’s beginnings as the hidden art of the whole enterprise. (Alchemists’ own their differences, which largely come alchemy to its modern status as a required drawings, such as those in the seventeenth- down to how instruments such as high- course in science. It also takes in the rise of century text Mutus Liber, tended toward the performance-liquid-chromatography industrial research, the gradual raising of wildly allegorical and the wilfully obscure.) equipment are arranged around the walls. consciousness about safety and the personal The German scientist Georgius Agricola’s If a chemist from, say, the early nineteenth impact of famous chemists. No discipline is 1556 De Re Metallica (On the Nature of century entered one, the glassware would immune to fashion, and a luminary — such Metals) is probably the first reliable guide be familiar, as would the bench and fume as Robert Bunsen, who co-discovered spec- to early lab technique such as the handling cupboard, although there might be a few troscopic analysis, or organic-chemistry of strong acids. In later illustrations, the fur- cries of “Luxury!” at the sight of dispos- pioneer Justus von Liebig — could set the nace shrinks, then disappears entirely, and able pipettes and electronic balances. (The tone for years by building a laboratory to his tables and benches appear. humming boxes around the periphery personal specifications. Fume hoods began to take on a modern would, of course, be harder to place.) As Morris shows, over all this stretches look by the 1920s, but separate cupboard- The changes to labs of the future will culture. Chemistry moved from a broadly like spaces for experimentation (at first probably come down to variations in the French and English occupation during unventilated) go back to at least the mid- number and capacity of automated instru- the Enlightenment, an era of experiments nineteenth century. Photographs from that ments. But the space will probably look on gases and chemical compositions, to a time show benches and shelving progres- broadly similar to what we have now, which German one in the mid-nineteenth century, sively stretching across the floors and walls, will no doubt disappoint some industrial with the Americans eventually beginning and lines for water, gas, steam and (by the designers looking to make a big splash. The to take notes and draw up plans of their early twentieth century) electricity thread- Matter Factory, however, is the story of the own in the twentieth century. Each nation ing into the picture. years (and centuries) during which such had its own style, which blended with the Teaching labs gradu- splashes could be made, when chemistry practical aspects of a workplace to create ally separate them- was finding out what it could do. It covers a distinctive looks. The most useful features selves from research lot of ground, and brings together many old (such as benches with drawers, and dedi- labs, and industrial drawings, plans and photographs that are cated lines for gases and steam) are still to labs begin to stand on otherwise scattered through a bewildering be found today. their own. Along the literature trail. It should remain the defini- Morris deftly keeps all these threads from way, we chemists lose tive history of the chemistry lab for many getting too tangled. The Matter Factory such amenities as the years. ■ starts in the alchemist’s lair of the medieval chemical museum, era, dominated by the largest, hottest fur- which displayed The Matter Derek Lowe has been working in drug Factory: A History nace available. The book makes clear that interesting specimens, of the Chemistry discovery labs at several companies many engravings and paintings of alche- compounds and lab Laboratory since 1989, and blogs at In the Pipeline mists at work must be inaccurate, because equipment — a once PETER J. T. MORRIS (www.pipeline.corante.com). they were drawn by people suspicious of common annex to Reaktion: 2015. e-mail: [email protected]