American Chemical Society Division of the History of Chemistry Program and Abstracts 234th ACS National Meeting Boston, MA August 19-23, 2007 J. S. Jeffers, Program Chair DIVISION OF THE HISTORY OF CHEMISTRY Chair: Roger A. Egolf Pennsylvania State University - Bulletin Editor: Paul R. Jones Lehigh Valley Campus University of Michigan 8380 Mohr Lane Department of Chemistry Fogelsville, PA 18051-9999 Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1055 Phone: (610) 285-5110 Fax: (734) 647-4865 Fax: (610) 285-5220 Email: [email protected] Email: [email protected] Councilor: Mary Virginia Orna Chair Elect: Janan M. Hayes Department of Chemistry Merced College (retired) College of New Rochelle 6829 Barbara Lee Circle New Rochelle, NY 10805 Sacramento, CA 95842 Phone: (914) 654-5302 Phone: (916) 331-6886 Fax: (914) 654-5387 Email: [email protected] Email: [email protected] Past Chair: Jeffrey I. Seeman Councilor: Ben B. Chastain SaddlePoint Frontiers 538 Hampton Drive 12001 Bollingbrook Place Birmingham, AL 35209 Richmond, VA 23236-3218 Phone: (205) 871-3859 Phone: (804) 794-1218 Email: [email protected] Email: [email protected] Alternate Councilor: Carmen Giunta Secretary-Treasurer: Vera V. Mainz Le Moyne College University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 1419 Salt Springs Rd. School of Chemical Sciences Syracuse, NY 13214-1399 142B RAL, Box 34 Noyes Lab Phone: (315) 445-4128 600 S. Mathews Ave. Fax: (315) 445-4540 Urbana, IL 61801 Email: [email protected] Phone: (217) 244-0564 Fax: (217) 244-8068 Archivist/Historian: James J. Bohning Email: [email protected] Dept. of Chemistry, Lehigh University 6 E. Packer Ave. Program Chair: Joe Jeffers Bethlehem, PA 18015 Ouachita Baptist University Phone: (610) 758-3582 410 Ouachita Street, Box 3786 Fax: (610) 758-6536 Arkadelphia, AR 71998-0001 Email: [email protected] Phone: (870) 245-5216 Fax: (870) 245-5241 Email: [email protected] 2 HIST DIVISION OF THE HISTORY OF CHEMISTRY 234th ACS National Meeting, Boston, MA, August 19-23, 2007 J. S. Jeffers, Program Chair SOCIAL EVENTS: Edelstein Dinner, Dom's Italian Restaurant, 7:00 pm, $45: Tue HIST Business meeting, 8:30 am: Mon SUNDAY MORNING Seaport Hotel -- Plaza C http://www.seaportboston.com/ General Papers J. S. Jeffers, Organizer, Presiding 8:45 —1. Americium: From discovery to the smoke detector and beyond. K. Kostecka 9:10 —2. Beilstein, Menshutkin and Mendeleev: End of an era. D. E. Lewis 9:35 —3. You are there: Teaching the history of chemistry where it happened. H. E. Pence 10:00 —4. Brief history of the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, UK. J. S. Jeffers 10:25 — Intermission. 10:40 —5. Echoes of great deaf chemists. T. Pagano, H. G. Lang 11:05 —6. James Young (1811-1883): Chemist, capitalist, and catalyst for the founding of the American petroleum industry. M. D. Saltzman 11:35 —7. Napoleon, Berthollet, and the Law of Mass Action. D. F. Martin, B. B. Martin Boston Convention and Exhibition Center (BCEC), Room 207 http://www.massconvention.com/bcec_flo.html Wolfrom/Isbell/New Investigator Award Symposium Sponsored by CARB, Cosponsored by BIOL, MEDI, ORGN, BIOHW, and HIST SUNDAY AFTERNOON 3 Seaport Hotel -- Plaza C http://www.seaportboston.com/ General Papers J. S. Jeffers, Organizer, Presiding 1:30 —8. Chemical history and the Holocaust. E. Klingsberg 1:55 —9. First annual ACS "Institute of Chemistry" in 1927: Grand experiment in chemical education. R. A. Olofson, K. A. Yarmey 2:20 —10. History of chemistry resources on the internet. C. J. Giunta 2:45 —11. Illustrations of chemical substances in some earlier Chinese writing. B. Ramsay 3:10 — Intermission. 3:25 —12. Paul Bartlett's mission: Bringing the message of mechanism to industrial research laboratories. S. J. Weininger 3:50 —13. Dr. Frankenstein, the lye of blood, and the beginning of chemical synthesis. S. A. Koch 4:15 —14. Prolegomena to a science of macromolecules. G. D. Patterson Boston Convention and Exhibition Center (BCEC), Room 207 http://www.massconvention.com/bcec_flo.html Wolfrom/Isbell/New Investigator Award Symposium Sponsored by CARB, Cosponsored by BIOL, MEDI, ORGN, BIOHW, and HIST MONDAY MORNING Seaport Hotel – Plaza C http://www.seaportboston.com/ 8:30 — HIST Business Meeting Classic Chemistry Books of the Twentieth Century 4: Spectroscopy Cosponsored with Bolton Society R. K. Smeltzer, Organizer, Presiding 8:50 — Introductory Remarks. 9:00 —15. Spectroscopy and the quantum revolution: Old quantum theory gives way to quantum mechanics. K. R. Metz 9:40 —16. Spectroscopy and the periodic table: Tribute to Friedrich Hund's Linienspektren und periodisches System der Elemente. W. B. Jensen 10:20 — Intermission. 10:35 —17. Gerhard Herzberg: physicist, chemist and astronomer. D. C. Morton 4 11:15 —18. Raising the bar for those who followed: Henry Rowland and the solar spectrum. S. C. Turner MONDAY AFTERNOON Seaport Hotel -- Plaza C http://www.seaportboston.com/ Classic Chemistry Books of the Twentieth Century 4: Spectroscopy Cosponsored with Bolton Society R. K. Smeltzer, Organizer, Presiding 1:30 —19. A brief history of light scattering spectroscopy. G. D. Patterson 2:10 —20. Vibrational and vibration-rotational molecular spectroscopy 1900-1960. A. Weber 2:50 — Intermission. 3:05 —21. Chemistry of the stars: Scheiner & Frost's treatise on astronomical spectroscopy. R. S. Brashear 3:45 —22. Two classics of early American solar spectroscopy. R. L. Kremer Boston Convention and Exhibition Center (BCEC) -- Exhibit Hall – B2 MONDAY EVENING http://www.massconvention.com/bcec_flo.html Sci-Mix J. S. Jeffers, Organizer 8:00 - 10:00 2, 10-11. See previous listings. TUESDAY MORNING Boston Convention and Exhibition Center (BCEC), Room 205A http://www.massconvention.com/bcec_flo.html Going With the Information Flow: Chemical Abstracts Service 100th Anniversary Presidential Symposium Sponsored by PRES, Cosponsored with HIST, CINF, CHED J. E. Mears, Organizer; E. Shively, Organizer; M. V. Orna, Organizer, Presiding 8:30 —Introduction: Science in the 20th Century. M. V. Orna. 5 8:35 — 6. An impressionistic look at the history of CAS. R. J. Massie 9:10 — 7. The CAS database: back to the future. C. Maulbecker 9:45 — 8. The importance of CAS to the world's scientists. H. Chihara 10:20 — 9. Chemical Abstracts service: its role in the history and evolution of scientific information. B. Lawlor 10:55 — 10. SciFinder: it's part of the R&D process. D. Ridley 11:30 —Concluding Remarks: C. T. Hunt, ACS President. TUESDAY AFTERNOON Seaport Hotel -- Plaza C http://www.seaportboston.com/ Edelstein Award Symposium Honoring Anthony S. Travis J. J. Bohning, Organizer, Presiding 1:45 — Introductory Remarks. 1:50 —23. Color: Whether pigment or dye, a delight for the eye. M. V. Orna 2:20 —24. Madder on the Monacacy: Eighteenth-century Moravian dye works in Pennsylvania. J. J. Bohning 2:50 —25. Messages from dye sample books: technical, commercial, and cultural. M. E. Bowden, E. McLeary 3:20 — Intermission. 3:35 —26. Dyeing for a tariff: American politics and German chemicals after World War I. K. Steen 4:05 —27. "What a wonderful empire is the organic chemistry". A. S. Travis 4:55 — Edelstein Award Presentation, Roger Egolf, HIST Chair. TUESDAY EVENING Edelstein Award Dinner J. S. Jeffers, Organizer 7:00-9:00 —Dom's Italian Restaurant, $45.00, http://www.domsboston.com/ 6 Abstracts HIST 1 Americium: From discovery to the smoke detector and beyond Keith Kostecka, Science and Mathematics Department, Columbia College -Chicago, 600 S. Michigan Avenue, Chicago, IL 60605, Fax: 312-344-8075, [email protected] Americium has proven, since its isolation by Seaborg and Ghiorso in 1944, to bean element that has proven useful as well as problematic. Discussion of the discovery of this element, its notable characteristics, isotopes, and applications (including in smoke detectors and use as a portable gamma ray source) will be offered. The chemistry of Americium will also be discussed in the context of scientific work being done to reduce the medium term radio-toxicity of the waste from the reprocessing of used nuclear fuel. HIST 2 Beilstein, Menshutkin and Mendeleev: End of an era David E. Lewis, Department of Chemistry, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, Eau Claire, WI 54702, Fax: 715-836-4979, [email protected] The four-month period from October, 1906, to February, 1907, witnessed the deaths of three of the founding members of the Russian Physical-Chemical Society: Friedrich Konrad (Fedor Fedorovich) Beilstein, Nikolai Aleksandrovich Menshutkin, and Dmitrii Ivanovich Mendeleev. This brief period also signaled the end of an era in Russian chemistry in general and Russian organic chemistry in particular. Of the remaining organic chemists who had reached their zenith during the 19th century, only Zaitsev remained, and he, too, would be deceased by the end of the decade. The young chemists who would replace these 19thcentury giants all survived well into the Soviet era; two (Chichibabin and Ipatiev) would flee their mother country and be stripped of their standing as Academicians. The three chemists in the title of this paper shared a complex relationship that will be explored in this talk. HIST 3 You are there: Teaching the history of chemistry where it happened Harry E. Pence, Dept. of Chemistry and Biochemistry, State University of New York, Oneonta, NY 13820, Fax: 607-436-2654, [email protected] What if you could teach about the origins of alchemy in a reconstructed Egyptian temple or in ancient Rome? What if you could teach about John Dee and English alchemy in a Renaissance village, the chemical revolution of Lavoisier in an 18th century French town, atomic structure in Paris in 1900, or space science inside of a life- sized Saturn rocket? Between classes you could take your students to the Globe Theater or the Moulin Rouge for an evening of relaxation. The on-line, 3D, virtual world called Second Life offers realistic simulations of these educational venues and many others, and you can enjoy it without cost.