Volume 31 - Number 10 October 1992 Pages 1265 - 1398 International Edition in English August Wilhelm Hofmann-“Reigning Chemist-in-Chief’ ** By Christoph Meinel” One hundred and twenty-five years ago, on November Ilth, 1867, the German Chemical Society of Berlin held its inaugural meeting. The main purpose of the Society was to unite pure and applied chemistry and to foster cooperation between academic research and the chemical industry. And, indeed, it soon became the major forum of German and even European chemistry. Its program clearly bears the hallmark of a single individual: August Wilhelm Hofmann, the Society’s first president, who died 100 years ago. For his contemporaries, Hofmann represented a new type of chemistry professor. At no time since have professional chemists felt as abundantly endowed with potential for the future and with public esteem. Hofmann’s portrait was monumental even then, and still today it would belong in any gallery devoted to our distinguished forebears. Anniversaries provide an opportunity to direct our attention toward the past-and thus to ourselves as well. We are, after all, heirs to that period from which the modern world derives its profile. Questions from our own time lead us to reacquaint ourselves with one of the founders of modern chemistry, but we may also benefit from a fresh look at an epoch which, beneath the surface of prosperity and progress, was as contradictory as our own, an epoch struggling to understand the role of science in the new industrial era. In Liebig’s Laboratory “This awakened his early interest in the study of modern languages and a certain facility for expressing himself in We must envision the young Hofmann as a sensitive indi- tongues other than his native German, a factor not without vidual, rather inclined toward literature and the arts-and its influence on his later career.”r21Hofmann registered as a the direct opposite of someone with a clear plan for the student in his native city of Giessen at the age of eighteen. future.[’] He was stamped with impressions gathered in edu- His father would have liked to have seen him study architec- cational travel, especially to Italy, where the boy was accorn- ture, but the son found himself drawn rather to languages, panied by his father, Johann Philipp Hofmann, privy coun- “an idea contested vigorously by the father on the grounds cillor and provincial architect to the court of Darrnstadt. that it could not lead to any satisfactory goal.” The resolu- tion of this dilemma was a decision in favor of law, a study [*] Prof. C. Meinel “to which the next few years were dedicated, with occasional Lehrstuhl fur Wissenschaftsgeschichte der Universitat Postfach, D-W-8400 Regensburg (FRG) interruptions and little notable success.” As far as the pursuit [“I This essay appears here as a preprint from Die Allianz von Wissenschaft of a utilitarian education was concerned, Hofmann found it und Industrie: August Wilhelm Hofmann (18iX-iXY2) -Zeii, Werk. difficult to develop any enthusiasm, “always wavering be- Wirkung (Eds.: C. Meinel, H. Scholz), VCH, Weinheim, November 1992. In this volume, historians, historians of science, and chemists from indus- tween philology, law, and even architecture.” In those days, try and academia discuss Hofmann’s life and work in the context of the preparing oneself to become an administrative official in- society and economy of his time. They also trace those traditions that led cluded learning the fundamentals of chemistry, so Hofmann to today’s chemical research. The authors of this bilingual volume come from Germany, Great Britain, the USA, Czechoslovakia, the Netherlands, became acquainted with the basic tenets of analytical chem- and Israel. istry in Liebig’s laboratory. The name Liebig was already on Angew. Chem. Inr. Ed. Engl. 1992, 3f, 1265-1282 0 VCH VerlagsgesellschafrmbH, W-6940 Weinheim, 1992 0570-0833/92jlOlO-f265$3.50+ ,2510 1265 every tongue-his novel didactic methods had in fact attract- emerged from the context of “plant and animal chemistry” ed students to Giessen from all over Europe. It had already as distinct fields of research. Fundamental concepts, the no- been necessary to expand the facilities of Liebig’s institute on tions of elements and molecules, nomenclature and formu- two occasions, and even to open a second branch, with con- las: all demanded clarification. The question of chemical struction activities carried out under the supervision of Hof- “vitalism”-which was supposed to provide a distinction mann’s father. The resulting frequent-indeed, friendly-in- between the “organic” and the “inorganic”-was transport- terchange between Herr Hofmann and Liebig was not ed into the realm of experimental answers. Commercial ap- without its effect on the son. According to one anecdote, plications promised to furnish the discipline with improve- Hofmann’s father was moved to provide Liebig with an ac- ments in obsolete techniques in addition to attractive profits. count of his son’s indecisiveness and lack of academic suc- Liebig’s recipe for success included introducing his gifted cess, to which Liebig is supposed to have responded: “give students to research at a very early stage.I6] There was no him to me, and 1’11 see what can be made out of him; he’s a such thing as a fixed curriculum, and passing an oral exam- good lad, and he’s certainly no fool; perhaps he just hasn’t ination was the sole requirement for a doctorate. Outstand- found the right path.”I3I ing performance on the latter, as in Hofmann’s case, consti- tuted grounds for certification as a qualified university Once within the sphere of attraction of the great master, he lecturer (Habilitation). Within a very short time we find soon felt an irresistible pull toward the natural sciences, Hofmann working as an assistant, and entrusted with editing which confronted him with the lure of the novel in contrast the Annalen der Chemie und Pharmacie. His own first re- to the singular course of his own previous studies. Thus search results appeared in this journal in 1843 under the title began a new life, the study of law forgotten, philology rele- “Chemische Untersuchung der organischen Basen im gated to the leisure hours, and the major part of his efforts Steinkohlen-Theeroel” (“Chemical Investigation of the Or- dedicated to the study of chemistry, physics, and finally ganic Bases in Coal-Tar Oil”).[71 mathematics. Soon we see the young man working as a How often does it happen that a young chemist takes on zealous pupil in the laboratory and ultimately taking part as as his first research topic a substance that will become the an assistant in the research of the revered professor.[41 basis for his later fame-and for an entire industry as well? Liebig’s institute in Giessen is regarded as the prototype of And how often does he succeed at the same time in locating the modern university laboratory. Here experimental re- a substrate open to almost infinite variation? The owner of search became incorporated directly into the educational a tar distillery in Offenbach, himself a former student of function of the university, and laboratories were trans- Liebig, sent a sample of the material to Giessen for analysis, formed into work stations dedicated to the production of and Hofmann was assigned the task of its investigation. He new knowledge. It was also here that the idea of a division of found in this tar two previously described bases, known as labor was first applied to research activities, with distinctive “kyanol” and “leukol” [q~inoline],[~]and after a great deal roles assigned to the group leader, one or more assistants, of effort extracted from it sufficient material to demonstrate and the research students. Moreover, contacts were estab- that the “kyanol” was actually identical to substances also lished between university research and industry, and the or- characterized in the literature as “krystallin,” “benzidam,” ganizational form of the university “institute” as a large- and “anilin.” Moreover, he showed that it bore a relation- scale enterprise had its beginnings. It all began with a single ship to phenol, one which could be expressed in terms of the piece of methodology : the elemental analysis of organic common radical “phen” or C,,H,, [C = 61. Shortly there- compounds, which was developed to the level of a routine after it became apparent that the other base, “leukol,” was procedure in 1832. This proved the key to organizing re- identical to Gerhardt’s quinoline. The latter was of consider- search along new lines: “turning out the most audacious able interest as a degradation product of quinine. Once Hof- discoveries in a factorylike fashion,” as Liebig once de- mann succeeded in obtaining larger quantities of aniline scribed it.[” These were also decisive years for the discipline from the benzene in coal tar, he subjected it to nitration and of chemistry itself. Organic and physiological chemistry subsequent reduction with zinc in acid, after which he began Christoph Meinel, born in Dresden in 1949. studied chemistry in Marburg. After receiving his Diplom, he turned toward the history ofscience and completed his Ph.D. in 1977 with a disserta- tion on the history of chemistry. Following a postdoctoral year at the University of Kent at Canterbury, he held positions at the Universities of Marburg and Hamburg and conducted research in the United States. In 1987 he completed his Habilitation in the field of history of science in Hamburg. He was Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study, Berlin, in 1987188, and later Heisenberg Fellow of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and coordinator of the Verbund fur Wissenschaftsgeschichte in Berlin. In 1990 he was appointed professor for history of science at Mainz but moved on to a chair for history of science at the University of Regensburg that same year.