Historical Group NEWSLETTER and SUMMARY OF PAPERS No. 77 Winter 2020 Registered Charity No. 207890 COMMITTEE Chairman: Dr Peter J T Morris ! Dr Christopher J Cooksey (Watford, 5 Helford Way, Upminster, Essex RM14 1RJ ! Hertfordshire) [e-mail: [email protected]] !Prof Alan T Dronsfield (Swanwick) Secretary: Prof. John W Nicholson ! Dr John A Hudson (Cockermouth) 52 Buckingham Road, Hampton, Middlesex, !Prof Frank James (University College) TW12 3JG [e-mail: [email protected]] !Dr Michael Jewess (Harwell, Oxon) Membership Prof Bill P Griffith ! Dr Fred Parrett (Bromley, London) Secretary: Department of Chemistry, Imperial College, ! Prof Henry Rzepa (Imperial College) London, SW7 2AZ [e-mail: [email protected]] Treasurer: Prof Richard Buscall, Exeter, Devon [e-mail: [email protected]] Newsletter Dr Anna Simmons Editor Epsom Lodge, La Grande Route de St Jean, St John, Jersey, JE3 4FL [e-mail: [email protected]] Newsletter Dr Gerry P Moss Production: School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Road, London E1 4NS [e-mail: [email protected]] https://www.qmul.ac.uk/sbcs/rschg/ http://www.rsc.org/historical/ 1 RSC Historical Group Newsletter No. 77 Winter 2020 Contents From the Editor (Anna Simmons) 2 Letter from the Chair (Peter Morris) 3 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CHEMISTRY HISTORICAL GROUP MEETINGS 3 The Handed World: 150 Years of Chiral Molecules 3 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CHEMISTRY HISTORICAL GROUP NEWS (John Nicholson) 4 Follow-up from the Summer 2019 RSC Historical Group Newsletter (Bill Griffith) 5 MEMBERS’ PUBLICATIONS 5 PUBLICATIONS OF INTEREST 5 Ambix 6 Bulletin for the History of Chemistry 6 NEWS AND UPDATES 6 News from Catalyst (John Hudson) 6 Division of History of the American Chemical Society (Bill Brock) 7 David Knight Memorial Page 8 Zeitkolorit - Mode und Chemie im Farbenrausch (1850-1930) 8 SHORT ESSAYS 8 Chemical Implications of Induced Transmutation (Michael Jewess) 8 The Rise and Fall of Meldola Blue (Chris Cooksey) 14 Alfred Bader: A Personal Appreciation (Jeff Levison), 15 BOOK REVIEWS 17 Annette Lykknes and Brigitte Van Tiggelen (eds.), Women in their Element: Selected Women’s Contributions to the Periodic System (Anna Simmons) 17 Gareth Williams, Unravelling the Double Helix: The Lost Heroes of DNA (Bill Griffith) 17 Peter Wothers, Antimony Gold and Jupiter’s Wolf: How the Elements were Named, (John Hudson) 18 CHEMICAL LANDMARK PLAQUES (Michael Jewess) 19 MEETING AND CONFERENCE REPORTS 21 William Crookes (1832-1919) 21 Report on the Twelfth International Conference on the History of Chemistry (Peter Morris) 25 Reception to Mark the Life of Joseph Priestley in Nantwich (Peter Morris) 26 Dyes in History and Archaeology Meeting Report 27 FORTHCOMING RSCHG MEETING 28 OTHER MEETINGS OF INTEREST 28 FORTHCOMING CONFERENCES 28 From the Editor Welcome to the winter 2020 RSC Historical Group Newsletter. The first meeting organised by the group in 2020, “The Handed World: 150 Years of Chiral Molecules”, will review optical activity and molecular chirality from a historical perspective. It will take place at the Royal Society of Chemistry, Burlington House, London, on Thursday 19 March 2020. Full details on how to register for the meeting can be found in the flyer enclosed with the hard copy version of the newsletter and in the online version. Registration is also available online via the RSC’s meeting booking system. This issue contains a wide variety of news items, short articles and reports. The first short article is by Mike Jewess and entitled “Chemical Implications of Induced Transmutation”. Then Chris Cooksey explores “The Rise and Fall of Meldola Blue”. Finally, Jeff Levison provides a personal reflection on the life of the chemist Alfred Bader, who died in late 2018. There are book reviews of the following three publications: Annette Lykknes and Brigitte Van Tiggelen, Women in their Element: Selected Women’s Contributions to the Periodic System; Gareth Williams, Unravelling the Double Helix: The Lost Heroes of DNA; and Peter Wothers, Antimony, Gold and Jupiter’s Wolf: How the Elements were Named. A short item on the replacement Moseley Chemical Landmark Plaque in Oxford follows. Those who missed the Historical Group’s joint meeting with the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry and the Royal Institution can read summaries of the papers given on the chemist and science journalist, William Crookes (1832-1919). There are also reports of the International Conference for the History of Chemistry held in Maastricht, the reception to mark the life of Joseph Priestley in Nantwich and the Dyes in History and Archaeology meeting held in Amsterdam. I would like to thank everyone who has contributed to this newsletter, particularly the newsletter production team of Bill Griffith and Gerry Moss and also John Nicholson, who liaises with the RSC regarding its online publication. If you would like to contribute items such as news, short articles, book reviews and reports please do contact me. The guidelines for contributors can be found online at http://www.chem.qmul.ac.uk/rschg/Guidelines.html The deadline for the summer 2020 issue will be Friday 5 June 2020. Please send your contributions to [email protected] as an attachment in Word. All contributions must be in electronic form. If you have received 2 the newsletter by post and wish to look at the electronic version which includes colour photographs it can be found at http://www.rsc.org/historical or http://www.sbcs.qmul.ac.uk/rschg/ The Historical Group posts the hard copy version of the newsletter to those members who request it. Printing and posting the hard copy version is expensive and if you are receiving the newsletter in hard copy and would be happy to read it online, please send an email to our Membership Secretary, Bill Griffith ([email protected]). Similarly, email Bill if you don’t currently receive the hard copy and would like to do so. Group members should receive an email from the RSC informing them when the latest version is available, but for the record the Newsletter appears twice each year – usually in January/February and July/August. It is often available online for several weeks before official notification is sent out by the RSC, so please do look out for the newsletter on both the RSC and Queen Mary Historical Group websites given above. Anna Simmons UCL Letter from the Chair I am writing to you all to tell you about our new initiative to involve our members more in our activities. It is now the policy of the RSC to interact with its members largely through the interest groups and local sections. It therefore behoves us to take steps to bring the Historical Group closer to its members, especially those who live outside the London area. Our first step was to ensure that all members who wish to hear from us (by email) can do so. It has come to our attention over the last year or so that several members were puzzled why they had not received this newsletter via email. As it almost invariably turned out that they had unwittingly opted out of e-mail communications from the RSC (which includes the Historical Group as our emails are “posted” by the RSC), we decided to contact those members who had opted out of email communications by letter to ask them if they wished to receive emails from us. Of the forty-odd members we contacted, six have asked to be opted into emails, so it has certainly been a worthwhile exercise. In our second step, we are introducing the informal position of regional representative. These regional representatives will act as a conduit between the committee and Historical Group members in their region, and will offer historical talks by our members to the local section secretaries in their region, using a local list drawn up by them and a national list which will be sent to all regional representatives in due course. If you are interested in becoming one of our regional representatives please contact me by email (or letter). Contact details are provided at the beginning of this newsletter. As our third step, we wish to involve members more in our meetings. We are very grateful to all the members who come to our meetings to listen to the talks, sometimes travelling long distances, but we would like to give you the opportunity to participate in the meetings. One way of doing this is to give a paper at one of our meetings. There are two calls for papers at present, one for our meeting on the life and work of Sir Geoffrey Wilkinson on 31 March 2021. If you would like to give a paper about Wilkinson or on a topic closely related to Wilkinson, please contact the organiser Henry Rzepa: [email protected] by email. The other meeting on the topic of women in chemistry will be held on 13 October 2021 and if you would like to give a paper at that meeting, please contact the pro temp organiser John Hudson: [email protected] by email. I must emphasise that while we are keen to have more of our members giving papers at our meetings, the selection of the papers for any given meeting is made by the organising committee for that meeting and for purely practical reasons, we may not be able to accept all the papers we might be offered. Finally, we would like to give members the opportunity to suggest topics for future meetings. Currently we have meetings arranged up to October 2021, but we are open to suggestions for meetings in 2022 and 2023. The meetings are usually held at Burlington House, typically in March and October, but if you wish to suggest a different venue and a different date, this might be possible if there is a strong reason for doing so.