The publication strategies of Jöns Jacob Berzelius (1779–1848): negotiating national and linguistic boundaries in chemistry

SUMMARY

This article follows the publication strategies of the Swedish chemist Jöns Jacob Berzelius (1779–1848). It focuses on the role of language and translation in Berzelius' efforts to strengthen his own reputation, and that of Swedish science. As an author and editor, Berzelius encouraged the translation of his own works into several languages, while endeavouring to preserve the status of Swedish as a language of scientific publication in the face of French, and increasingly German and English, dominance. Reforming the Transactions of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and launching several new scientific periodicals, Berzelius also attempted to influence the publication practices in other countries.

Recent scholarship on the history of scientific publication has drawn attention to the practical difficulties of determining and getting hold of the relevant publications in one's field, the ‘malleability’ of the journal medium, and the common practice of reprinting and summarising papers published elsewhere. Berzelius’ publication strategies highlight translation – time-consuming, unreliable and problematic in terms of authorisation and ownership – as one aspect of the wider problem of communicating across national and linguistic boundaries. Berzelius' struggles with the practicalities of communicating across borders in times of war, the choice of language and its consequences, and national standards of publication, demonstrate the importance of a transnational perspective on the history of scientific publication.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my colleagues at the Department of History of Ideas and Sciences at Uppsala University, and in the research programme “Science and Modernization in Sweden”, and especially two anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper; and Jens Eriksson and Alex Csiszar for allowing me to quote from their unpublished manuscripts.

Notes

¹Humphry Davy, ‘The Bakerian Lecture: On the Relations of Electrical and Chemical Changes’, Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond., 116 (1826), 383–422 (384).

²Ibid., p. 388.

³Letter from Berzelius to Friedrich Wöhler, 2 February 1827, Berzelius archive, Center for History of Science, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm.

⁴Jacob Berzelius, Årsberättelse om framstegen i physik och chemie 1827 (Stockholm: Kungl. vetenskapsakademien, 1827), pp. 19--35.

⁵Ibid., p. 26.

⁶Alex Csiszar, ‘Seriality and the search for order: scientific print and its problems during the late Nineteenth Century’, History of Science, 48 (2013), 399–434; idem, The scientific journal: Authorship and the politics of knowledge in the nineteenth century (University of Chicago Press, forthcoming); Jonathan Topham, ‘Anthologizing the Book of Nature: The circulation of knowledge and the origins of the scientific journal in late Georgian Britain’, in The circulation of knowledge between Britain, India, and China: The early-modern world to the twentieth century, ed. by Bernard Lightman, Gordon McOuat & Larry Stewart (London: Brill, 2013), pp. 120–52; Iain P. Watts, ‘“We want no authors”: William Nicholson and the contested role of the scientific journal in Britain, 1797–1813’, British Journal for the History of Science, 47 (2014), 397–419. For a more taxonomic perspective on the journal medium, see David A. Kronick, A history of scientific and technical periodicals: The origins and development of the scientific and technical press, 1665-1790, 2nd edn. (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1976); and A. A. Manten, ‘The growth of European scientific journal publishing before 1850’, in Development of science publishing in Europe, ed. by A. J. Meadows (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1980).

⁷See Jonathan Topham, ‘Science, Print, and Crossing Borders: Importing French Science Books into Britain, 1789–1815’, in Geographies of nineteenth-century science, ed. by David N. Livingstone & Charles W. J. Withers (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), pp. 311–44; and David M. Bickerton, Marc-Auguste and Charles Pictet, the Bibliothèque britannique (1796-1815) and the dissemination of British literature and science on the continent (Geneve: Slatkine reprints, 1986).

⁸For a discussion of French dominance in chemistry, see Maurice Crosland, In the shadow of Lavoisier: The Annales de chimie and the establishment of a new science (Stanford in the Vale: British Society for the History of Science, 1994). An English perspective on the period is Jan Golinski, Science as public culture: Chemistry and enlightenment in Britain, 1760-1820 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). On German chemical journals, see Karl Hufbauer, The formation of the German chemical community (1720-1795) (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982); also Christa Jungnickel & Russell McCormmach, Intellectual mastery of nature: Theoretical physics from Ohm to Einstein. Volume 1: The torch of mathematics 1800-1870 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1986). For a broader discussion of German scientific journals, see Thomas Broman, The transformation of German academic medicine, 1750-1820 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Denise Phillips, Acolytes of nature: Defining natural science in Germany, 1770-1850 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012).

⁹Michael Gordin, Scientific Babel: The language of science from the fall of Latin to the rise of English (London: Profile Books, 2015); on Bergman, see pp. 41--9. For an example of the lively translation activity between Sweden and Germany in the eighteenth century, see Andreas Önnerfors, ‘Translating Discourses of Enlightenment: Trans-cultural Language Skills and Cross-references between Swedish and German Educated Journals in the 18th century’, in Cultural transfer through translation: The circulation of Enlightened thought in Europe by means of translation, ed. by Stephanie Stockhorst (New York: Rodopi, 2010), pp. 208–29.

¹⁰Anders Lundgren, Berzelius och den kemiska atomteorin (Uppsala: Uppsala universitet, 1979); Evan Melhado, Jacob Berzelius: The emergence of his chemical system (Uppsala: Lärdomshistoriska samfundet, 1981); Melhado & Tore Frängsmyr (eds.), Enlightenment science in the romantic era: The chemistry of Berzelius in its cultural setting (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); H. G. Söderbaum, Jac. Berzelius: Lefnadsteckning. 3 vols (Stockholm: Kungl. Vetenskapsakademien, 1929–31). Berzelius gives his own account in Jöns Jacob Berzelius, Själfbiografiska anteckningar. Utgifna af Kungl. Svenska Vetenskapsakademien genom H. G. Söderbaum (Stockholm: Norstedts, 1901).

¹¹Wilhelm Odelberg, ‘Berzelius as Permanent Secretary’, in Science in Sweden: the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, 1739-1989, ed. by Tore Frängsmyr (Canton, MA: Science History Publications, 1989), pp. 124–47; Karin Johannisson, Ingemar Nilsson & Roger Qvarsell (eds.), Medicinen blir till vetenskap: Karolinska Institutet under två århundraden (Stockholm: Karolinska Institutet University Press, 2010).

¹²The quotation is from Sten Lindroth, Kungl. Vetenskapsakademiens historia 1739-1818, vol. II: Tiden 1783-1818 (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1967), p. 125. Berzelius’ publications are listed in Arne Holmberg, Bibliografi över J.J. Berzelius, 6 vol. (Stockholm: Kungl. Svenska vetenskapsakademien, 1933–67). This article focuses on Berzelius’ publications in periodicals, and I will not discuss Berzelius’ chemical textbook, one of his most influential and widely translated publications. A description of the translations of the chemical textbook is Marika Blondel-Mégrelis, ‘Berzelius's textbook: In translation and multiple editions, as seen through his correspondence’, in Communicating chemistry: Textbooks and their audiences, 1789-1939, ed. by Anders Lundgren & Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent (Canton, MA: Science History Publications, 2000), pp. 233–54.

¹³I will not discuss the language of chemistry in the sense of chemical nomenclature in the article, though it is striking that many Swedish scientists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (e. g. Bergman, Berzelius, and Linnaeus) were involved in nomenclatural schemes. See Maurice Crosland, Historical studies in the language of chemistry (London: Heinemann, 1962); idem, The language of science: From the vernacular to the technical (Cambridge: The Lutterworth Press, 2006).

¹⁴On the rise of French, English, and German in nineteenth-century chemistry, see Gordin (note 9), p. 43.

¹⁵The biographical details in the following are from Söderbaum (note 10) unless otherwise indicated.

¹⁶Söderbaum (note 10), vol. 1, pp. 121f.; Berzelius, Själfbiografiska anteckningar (note 10), p. 30. The reason given by the Secretary, Carl Gustaf Sjöstén, was that the Academy did not accept the chemical nomenclature used in the paper. The periodical Kungl. Vetenskapsakademiens Handlingar is variously translated as Transactions of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and Proceedings of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In this article, I will use Transactions.

¹⁷For Hisinger's bibliography, see [Anon], ‘Biografi över Wilhelm Hisinger, brukspatron, kommendör af Kong. Wasa-Orden, riddare af Kongl. Nordstjerne-Orden’, Kungliga vetenskapsakademiens handlingar, 1852, 385–91.

¹⁸Wilhelm Hisinger & Jacob Berzelius, ‘Versuche, betreffend die Wirkung der electrischen Säule auf Salze und auf einige von ihren Basen’, Neues allgemeines Journal der Chemie, 1 (1803), 115–49.

¹⁹Hisinger & Berzelius, ‘Cerium, ein neues Metall aus einer schwedischen Steinart, Bastnäs Tungsten genannt. Beschrieben von W. Hisinger und J. Berzelius in Stockholm’, Neue allgemeines Journal der Chemie, 2 (1804), 397–418.

²⁰Berzelius & Hisinger, Cerium, en ny metall, funnen i Bastnäs Tungsten från Riddarhyttan i Westmanland (Stockholm: Henrik A. Nordström, 1804).

²¹‘Cérium, nouveau métal trouvé dans une substance minérale de Bastnas en Suède, appelée Tungstein, décrit par W. D'Hisinger et J. B. Berzelius', Annales de Chimie, 50 (1804), 245–71 (pages 245–56 wrongly numbered 145--56 in the original).

²²‘Account of cerium, a new metal found in a mineral substance from Bastnas, in Sweden. By W. D'Hesinger [sic] and J. B. Bergelius [sic]. (From the Swedish, by G. A. Linborn [sic]; but here transl. from the Annales de chimie, 50.)’, Journal of Natural Philosophy, 9 (1804), 290—300; 10 (1805), 10–12; ‘On cerium, a new metal found in a mineral substance of Bastnas, in Sweden, called tungsten, described by W. D'Hisinger and J. B. [sic] Berzelius (Annales de chimie, 50)’, The Philosophical Magazine, 20 (1805), pp. 154–8. A detailed description of the cerium discovery is Jan Trofast, Upptäckten av cerium, selen, kisel, zirkonium och torium (Lund: Ligatum, 2014).

²³For a bibliography of Swedish periodicals of the period, see Bernhard Lundstedt, Sveriges periodiska litteratur 1645-1899: En bibliografi, 3 vol. (Stockholm: Publicistklubben, 1895-1902), available digitally at http://www.kb.se/Sverigesperiodiskalitteratur/ [accessed 23 June 2015].

²⁴ Afhandlingar i Fysik, Kemi, och Mineralogi, 6 delar (1806, 1807, 1810, 1815, 1818, 1818).

²⁵Söderbaum, (note 10), vol. 1, pp. 234ff. Berzelius, Själfbiografiska anteckningar (note 10), 118–9.

²⁶Bickerton, Marc-Auguste and Charles Pictet (note 7), Topham, ‘Science, print, and crossing borders' (note 7).

²⁷On Swedish press laws and censorship, see Thomas von Vegesack, Smak för frihet: Opinionsbildningen i Sverige 1755-1830 (Stockholm: Natur och kultur, 1995), especially pp. 151–71.

²⁸On Swedish reading societies, see Hanna Östholm, Litteraturens uppodling: Läsesällskap och litteraturkritik som politisk strategi vid sekelskiftet 1800 (Hedemora: Gidlunds, 2000).

²⁹Vegesack (note 27), p. 170.

³⁰ Själfbiografiska anteckningar (note 10), pp. 118–9. The incident with the proposed reading circle is recounted in the context of the launch of the Annual Survey in 1821, more than a decade after the freedom of the press act of 1809. The quotation, ‘den ogunstigaste period litteraturen i Sverige någonsin känt’, is from Berzelius, ‘Ödmjukt memorial’, Bilaga till Akademiens protokoll 1812, 304 (read at the meeting of August 22, 1810). Archives of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Center for History of Science, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm.

³¹On Adlersparre and his journals Läsning för landtmän 1795, from 1797 Läsning i blandade ämnen, see Vegesack (note 27), passim.

³²Berzelius, Själfbiografiska anteckningar (note 10), p. 215.

³³On Leffler, Böcker, and Berzelius’ early translators, see Söderbaum (note 10), vol. 1, pp. 320, 336, 401f.

³⁴Trofast (note 22), p. 52.

³⁵Letter from Gehlen to Hisinger, 25 March 1804, Hisinger archive, Center for History of Science, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm. Gehlen wrote to Hisinger in German, and Hisinger answered in French. Sweden had produced a number of famous chemists and mineralogists in the eighteenth century, and material from Swedish mines was the source of several new elements in the period. On Swedish chemistry in the eighteenth century, see Hjalmar Fors, Mutual favours: The social and scientific practice of eighteenth-century Swedish chemistry (Uppsala: Uppsala universitet, 2003).

³⁶‘Nyss har jag fått ett par nya häften av Thomson och Tilloch. Intet vetenskapligt nytt; bara en förbannad översättning av chlorinavhandlingen, som är så topprasande, att jag måste skriva Thomson till och begära att i ett annat häfte få det rättat. – Jag är bra olycklig i översättning.’ Letter from Berzelius to Johan Gottlieb Gahn 21 October 1816. Berzelius archive, Center for History of Science, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm.

³⁷‘Gilberts död har smärtat mig, han passade bra där han var, och hans Annaler voro, om icke just en courant journal, åtminstone en alldeles förträfflig biblioteksbok, emedan han hade den fliten att samla allt vad som hörde till ett och samma ämne på samma ställe. Det för, att Gilberts Annaler aldrig komma att dela andra journalers och tidningars öde, att duga endast för året.’ Letter to Heinrich Rose, 25 March 1824. Berzelius archive, Center for History of Science, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm.

³⁸Bickerton (note 7); Maeve Olohan, ‘Gate-keeping and localizing in scientific translation publishing: The case of Richard Taylor and Scientific Memoirs’, British Journal for the History of Science, 47 (2014), 433–450 (436).

³⁹‘Das ist darauf abgesehn beide Zeitschriften zum Untergange zu bringen. Der Buchhandel liegt so schon durch die französ. Einrichtungen welche allen Büchern der Eingang über die Douaner Linie versperrent tödlich danieder, und durch der Geldmangel. Soll der Käufer dasselbe Zweimahl bezahlen, so verliest er alle Lust, und er geht ab. Ich hoffe die Annalen durch diese Unglücksperiode hindurchzusteuern, kostet es mir nicht allzu grosse Aufopferungen, wünsche aber dabei noch durch meine vortreffl. Freunde unterstütz [sic] zu werden [ … ].’ Letter from Gilbert to Berzelius, 8 October 1811. Berzelius archive, collection 3:131, Center for History of Science, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm.

⁴⁰On copyright legislation in the German language area, see Jens Eriksson, The end of piracy: Rethinking the history of German print piracy in the early nineteenth century (Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, forthcoming). On the problems of reprinting and pre-printing, in an English context, see Watts (note 6).

⁴¹Melhado (note 10), p. 150.

⁴²‘The golden age is past, and there have since been occasions when the quality of the Proceedings, with the exception of one or two good pieces, has fallen far below the legitimate expectations of the public.’ ‘Den gyllene ålder är förfluten, och det har sedermera gifvits tilfällen, då Handlingarnas hallt, med undantag af ett och annat godt stycke, sänkt sig långt under allmänhetens rättmätiga fordringar.’ Ibid.

⁴³‘Det har sedan längre tid tilbaka varit min önskan at se kgl. Vettenskaps Akademiens handlingar reformerade på et sätt, som mera öfverensstämmer med deras ändamål och med hvad erfarenheten hos andra vetenskaps Akademier och lärda sällskaper godkänns. Vår Akademi tyckes hafva et dubbelt ändamål: besvarandet af de frågor, som af Regeringen till henne remitteras, och sina Handlingars utgifvande.’ Ibid.

⁴⁴‘Jag tviflar nästan, at utan denna reformation fullständigare utarbetade, rent vettenskapliga afhandlingar af svenska författare någonsin kunna komma at tryckas på svenska'. Acad. d. 7 Aug. 1811. Bil n. 5. Bilaga till Akademiens protokoll 1811, 117–8. Archives of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Center for History of Science, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm.

⁴⁵On the problems with the publications of learned societies, see Csiszar, The scientific journal (note 6); also Topham, ‘Anthologizing the Book of Nature’ (note 6), and Watts (note 6).

⁴⁶‘[Det var en allmän erfarenhet, att] i Sverige vetenskapliga periodiska skrifter saknade afsättning’. Berzelius, Själfbiografiska anteckningar (note 10), p. 119.

⁴⁷’Strängt wetenskapliga arbeten af större omfattning, hwilka ej egentligen begagnas till undervisningsböcker, kunna härstädes icke, eller åtminstone sällan, på enskild mans förlag tryckas, så wida de ej författas på Latinska språket, eller något af de mest utbredda fremmande moderna språken, så att man kan hafwa hopp om bokens afsättning utom riket.’ Nils Lundequist, Stockholms stads historia, från stadens anläggning till närwarande tid i trenne delar (Stockholm: Zacharias Haeggström, 1828–9), vol. 3, p. 321, available electronically at http://www.stockholmskallan.se/Soksida/Post/?nid=11545 [accessed 27 November 2015].

⁴⁸‘J'ai reçu votre mémoire sur le molybdène; Mr Pasch a bien voulu se charger de le traduire. Nous sommes bien embarrassés pour les traductions, et c'est ce qui m'a déterminé à faire apprendre le suédois à un de mes enfants. Mais le croiriez vous? Je n'ai pas pu me procurer ici les livres convenables; c'est à dire un dictionnaire et une grammaire de français au suédois.’ Mr Pasch is Gustaf Erik Pasch, professor of technology at the Academy of Sciences, who was visiting Paris. Letter from Gay-Lussac to Berzelius, 25 May 1826. Berzelius archive, Center for History of Science, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm.

⁴⁹Söderbaum (note 10), pp. 4ff.

⁵⁰ Kongl. maj:ts nådigste stadfästelse på svenska vetenskaps-academiens förnyade grundreglor, gifven Stockholms slott d. 30 nov. 1820 (Stockholm: J. P. Lindhs enka, 1821).

⁵¹Holmberg (note 12).

⁵²Berzelius, Själfbiografiska anteckningar (note 10), p. 118.

⁵³Berzelius, Årsberättelse om vetenskapernas framsteg afgifne af Kongl. Vetenskaps-Academiens Embetsmän d. 31 mars 1821 (Stockholm: J. P. Lindhs Enka, 1822), p. 20.

⁵⁴Ibid., p. 21.

⁵⁵The surveys of Berzelius’ colleagues were neither as comprehensive nor as opinionated as his own, and tended to focus more on national developments.

⁵⁶Berzelius, Själfbiografiska anteckningar (note 10), p. 118ff.

⁵⁷Berzelius, Årsberättelse om framstegen i physik och chemie 1827 (note 4), p. 1.

⁵⁸The sentiment and its expression is remarkably similar to those voiced by Thomas Thomson in 1813 (quoted in Topham, ‘Anthologizing the Book of Nature’, note 6, p. 119), Edward Hatfield in 1816, and the editors of the Mechanics Magazine in 1825 (Watts, note 6, p. 397).

⁵⁹David Kronick devotes one chapter to eighteenth-century abstract journals in his book A history of scientific and technical periodicals: The origins and development of the scientific and technical press, 1665-1790. 2nd ed. (Metuchen. N. J.: Scarecrow Press, 1976), pp. 171–83.

⁶⁰The most prominent were Christian Gottlob Gmelin (1792-1860), professor in Tübingen; Friedrich Wöhler (1800-1882), Göttingen; Eilhard Mitscherlich (1794-1863), Berlin; the brothers Heinrich Rose (1795-1864) and Gustav Rose (1798-1873), both professors in Berlin. An overview of visitors to Berzelius’ laboratory is in J. Erik Jorpes, Jac. Berzelius (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1966), pp. 66–72.

⁶¹On the textbook translations, see Blondel-Mégrelis (2000).

⁶²Crosland, In the shadow of Lavoisier (note 8).

⁶³Söderbaum suggests that Berzelius’ move away from French and English chemistry was reinforced by the deaths of his colleagues Alexander Marcet and Claude Louis Berthollet in 1822. Söderbaum (note 10), vol II, p. 284.

⁶⁴On Poggendorff's Annalen, see Jungnickel & McCormmach (note 8).

⁶⁵On the emergence of such a German scientific sphere in chemistry, see Hufbauer (note 8). On the importance of journals for the German medical community, see Broman (note 8); for a perspective emphasising sociability and local networks, see Phillips (note 8).

⁶⁶Berzelius, Själfbiografiska anteckningar (note 10), p. 119. See also Östholm (note 28), pp. 43--9, on the difficulty of finding reading material even in a university town such as Uppsala.

⁶⁷‘Note sur quelques Composés nouveaus, extraite d'une lettre de M. Dumas à M. Arago’, 6 May 1826, Annales de chimie et de physique 1 (1826), 433–6.

⁶⁸‘Men denna besynnerlighet förklaras på följande sätt: Dumas läser ej tyska.’ Jacob Berzelius, Årsberättelse om framstegen i physik och chemie 1827 (note 4), p. 85.

⁶⁹There are very few sealed notes for the period 1800-1850 in the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Depositioner och förseglade brev, Ms. Sekreterarens arkiv, Archives of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm. Csiszar (The scientific journal, note 6) notes that the number of paquets cachetés in the Académie des Sciences amounted to one hundred each year by the 1840s, while the Royal Society received a total of nine notes by 1850.

⁷⁰Jacob Berzelius, Årsberättelse om framstegen i physik och chemie 1827 (note 4), p. 85.

⁷¹Kapil Raj, ’Beyond Postcolonialism … and Postpositivism: Circulation and the Global History of Science’, Isis, 104 (2013), 337–47; see also James A. Secord, ‘Knowledge in transit’, Isis, 95 (2004), 654–72.