Kolbe Versus the “Transcendental Chemists”: the Emergence of Classical Organic Chemistry

References

• Hermann Kolbe, “Zeichen der Zeit: W”, Journal far praktische Chemie, 123 (1877)5473–77 (474–76). It is perhaps relevant to note that this paper was the first published by Kolbe after the death of his wife (on 26 December 1876), to whom he was devoted.
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• Jeffrey Johnson, “Academic Chemistry in Imperial Germany”, Isis, 76 (1985), 500–24, esp. 503–10.
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• For good and sympathetic studies of Kolbe’s contributions to chemistry, see Ernst von Meyer, A History of Chemistry (London, 1898), pp. 311–22; J. R. Partington, A History of Chemistry, 4 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1961–70), 4, 502–31; Harold Hartley, Studies in the History of Chemistry (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), pp. 206–20; and C. A. Russell, The History of Valency (Leicester University Press, 1971), pp. 27–34. The best biographies are E. von Meyer, “Zur Erinnerung an Hermann Kolb t", Journal für praktische Chemie, 138 (1885), 417–66; and Georg Lockemann, “Hermann Kolbe”, in G. Bugge, ed., Das Buch der grossen Chemiker, 2 vols. (Berlin: Verlag Chemie, 1930), 2, 124–36.
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• A. J. Rocke, Chemical Atomism in the Nineteenth Century: From Dalton to Cannizzaro (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1984), pp. 181—82.
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• Wöhler introduced him to Berzelius when the Swede visited Göttingen. Berzelius subsequently described Kolbe’s first research project in very flattering terms; Kolbe preserved a letter he received from Berzelius (dated 3 August 1844) as a “talisman” for the rest of his life (“Meine Betheiligung an der Entwickelung der theoretischen Chemie”, Journal für praktische Chemie, 131 [1881], 305–23, 353–79, 497–517, 132 [ 1881 ] 374–425; on 131, 309). It should be noted that Kolbe was studying with Wöhler just when Berzelius was developing his copula theory, which Kolbe enthusiastically adopted and developed.
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• Kolbe was also at Göttingen when Wöhler composed his masterly and hilarious lampoon of Dumas’ type theory (S. C. H. Windier [Wöhler], “Ueber das Substitutionsgesetz und die Theorie der Typen”, Annalen der Chemie und Pharmacie, 33 [1840], 308), and when opposition to the ideas of Gerhardt and Laurent were first building in established chemical circles.
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• Kolbe, “Ueber die chemische Constitution und Natur der organischen Radicale”, Annalen der Chemie und Pharmacie, 75 (1850), 211–39, 76 (1850), 1–73; “On the Chemical Constitution and Nature of Organic Radicals”, Journal of the Chemical Society, 3 (1850), 369–405, 4 (1851), 41–79.
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• For documentation of the assertion that the “newer type theory” of Williamson, Wurtz, and Kekulé turned from Gerhardtian agnosticism to the ontological constitutional (structural) orientation of Berzelius and his school, see Rocke, Chemical Atomism, 215–25, 251–73, 284n.: and idem, “Kekulé, Butlerov, and the Historiography of the Theory of Chemical Structure”, British Journal for the History of Science, 14 (1981), 27–57 (29–30, 48–51).
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• Kolbe, “Kritische Bemerkungen zu Williamson’s Wasser-, Aether-, und Säure-Theorie”, Annalen der Chemie und Pharmacie, 90 (1854), 46–61; “Critical Observations on Williamson’s Theory of Water, Ethers, and Acids”, Journal of the Chemical Society, 7 (1854), 111–21; “Kritik der Williamson-Gerhardt’schen Theorie”, Ausführliches Lehrbuch der organischen Chemie, 2 vols. (Brunswick, 1854–64), 1, 49–53; A. W. Williamson, “On Dr. Kolbe’s Addition Formulae”, Journal of the Chemical Society, 7 (1854), 122–39. For a discussion, see Rocke, Chemical Atomism, pp. 229–44.
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• Edward Frankland, “On a New Series of Organic Bodies Containing Metals”, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 142 (1852), 417–44. It is both ironic and significant that the title of this paper, the single most theoretically important in Frankland’s brilliant career, refers only to the discovery of some “new organic bodies”.
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• Two recent discussions of these developments are Russell, History of Valency, pp. 34–81 and 108–34, and Rocke, Chemical Atomism, pp. 238–44 and 251–81.
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• At the time of the Kolbe-Williamson polemic of 1854 (above, n. 9), Williamson commented privately: “. . . there seems little chance of my converting him to more rational views on the subject, as he does not enter into or understand the point of view opposed to his view.” (Williamson to H. E. Roscoe, 9 February 1854, Roscoe Collection, Royal Society of Chemistry, London; I thank the curator for access and permission to quote.) Kolbe himself admitted that until 1881 he never read Kekulé’s classic Lehrbuch der organischen Chemie (2 vols., Erlangen, 1859–66), where Kekulé’s structure theory was most systematically treated, since he knew he could learn nothing from it (“Meine Betheiligung”, above, n. 5, 131, 377). By contrast, Frankland well knew how to appropriate and incorporate elements of the type theory into his own evolving theoretical views (see previous note).
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• Kolbe, Lehrbuch, 1 568–69 (this fascicle appeared late in 1857); C. Friedel, Comptes rendus . . . de l’Académie des Sciences, 55 (1862), 53–58 (discovery ofisopropyl alcohol); A. Butlerov, Zeitschrift für Chemie, 7 (1864), 385–402 (discovery of tert-butyl alcohol).
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• A recent discussion is Rocke, “Hypothesis and Experiment in the Early Development of Kekulé’s Benzene Theory”, Annals of Science, 42 (1985), 355–81.
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• Kolbe, Ueber die chemische Constitution der organischen Kohlenwasserstoffe: Vortrag . . . gehalten ... am 16. November 1868 (Brunswick, 1869), pp. 6, 11, 24, 30. John Brooke has discussed Berzelius’ consistent use of chemical analogy from inorganic to organic chemistry, especially in his “Chlorine Substitution and the Future of Organic Chemistry: Methodological Issues in the Laurent-Berzelius Correspondence (1843–1844)”, Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, 4 (1973), 47–94.
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• Kolbe, “Die Aufgaben der Mineralchemie”, Journal für praktische Chemie, 109 (1870), 1–6.
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• Kolbe, “Ueber einige Abkömmlinge des Cyanamids,” Journal für praktische Chemie, 109 (1870), 288–306 (292–94); “Ueber die Structurformeln und die Lehre von der Bindung der Atome”, ibid., 111 (1871), 127–36 (128). Other clear statements by Kolbe of the differences he saw between his and the structuralists’ formulas are in Kohlenwasserstoffe (above, n. 15), p. 39; “Meine Betheiligung” (above, n. 5), 132, 414; and “Moden der modernen Chemie”, Journal für praktische Chemie, 112 (1871), 241–71.
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• This point has not been well understood: Kolbe despised any antitheoretical approach, and often fulminated against “crass empiricism”, such as that of Gerhardt. See for instance “Abkömmlinge”, p. 291; “Structurformeln,” p. 131; and Das chemische Laboratorium der Universität Marburg (Brunswick, 1865), p. 30. Kolbe was not complimenting Adolf Baeyer when he referred to him as a mere empiricist: “Begründung meiner Urtheile über Adolf Baeyer’s wissenschaftliche Qualification”, Journal für praktische Chemie, 134 (1882), 308–23 (308).
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• Kolbe, “Chemischer Rückblick auf das Jahr 187 3”, Journal für praktische Chemie, 116 (1874), 417–25 (419–20). The roots of Kolbe’s settled agnosticism about the accessibility of atomic arrangements can be seen as early as 1854: Lehrbuch (above, n. 9), 1, 13.
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• Kolbe, “Die chemische Synthese, ein chemischer Traum”, Journal für praktische Chemie, 126 (1878), 432–55 ( 440n, 444–45); “Kritisch-chemische Gänge [gegen die transscendentalen Chemiker]: I,” ibid., 135 (1883), 408–17; “Kritisch-chemische Gänge . . . IV”, 136 (1883), 356–82 (372n.); “Die realen Typen der organischen Verbindungen”, 136 (1883), 440–47 (44m.).
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• Kolbe, “Kritik der Rectoratsrede von August Kekulé”, Journal für praktische Chemie, 125 (1878), 139–56 (153); “Meine Betheiligung” (above, n. 5), 131, 516; “Meine Urtheile über Adolf Baeyer” (above, n. 18), p. 323.
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• “Dr. R.” [Kolbe], “Vertrauliches Schreiben an Professor Kolbe”, Journal für praktische Chemie, 124 (1877), 467–72.
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• Kekulé, “Offene Antwort auf das vertrauliche Schreiben an Professor Kolbe”, Journal für praktische Chemie, 125 (1878), 159–62.
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• Kolbe, “Kritik” (above, n. 21), esp. pp. 140, 149, 151, 152, and 156; Kolbe called Kekulé’s concept of chemistry a “Missgeburt crasser Naturphilosophie”, because Kekulé, like the Naturphilosophen, created from his imagination whereas a true scientist discovers facts (p. 145). Elsewhere Kolbe emphasized that modern structural formulas are usually “constructed virtually in one’s sleep” (“Moden der modernen Chemie”, above, n. 17, p. 256); and he later accused Baeyer of following his teacher’s (Kekulé’s) “dream-like” example (“Chemischer Traum”, above, n. 20, p. 434). Kolbe’s “official” but non-substantive response to Kekulé’s rebuttal was his “Nachtrag zu dem vertraulichen Schreiben des Dr. R”, (ibid., pp. 157–59), but there is reason to suspect that Kolbe wrote his “Kritik” after receipt of the letter containing Kekulé’s rebuttal—all three were published in the same number of Kolbe’s Journal für praktische Chemie.
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• The word in quotes (“devourer of Frenchmen”) is that of his student H. E. Armstrong, in “The Doctrine of Atomic Valency”, Nature, 125 (1930), 807–10. “Kolbe was . . . never a man of the world, a good lecturer and a far better writer [than Kekulé, Hofmann, and Frankland] but not an orator; the best chemist of all. Hofmann and Kekulé were cosmopolitans; Frankland was ever the plain, high-souled Lancashireman; Kolbe—just the dear old German, academic pedagogue of the highest class . . . When I left him in 1870, he was already peculiar: he afterwards, in his last years, so fixed his mind upon certain grievances as to be little short of monomaniac” (ibid., pp. 808–9). The death of his wife at the end of 1876 and a severe accidental poisoning in 1878 have also been cited as possibly intensifying his paranoia. In another article Armstrong comments that Kolbe was “almost bourgeois in appearance, a typical professor of the old school, though with a wonderful sparkle of intelligence in his eyes and a most endearing personality when you learnt to know him—not the ogre he has been painted” (“The Riddle of Benzene: August Kekulé”, Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry, 48 (1929), 914–18, on 915). His son-in-law Ernst von Meyer noted approvingly that he was an exceptionally strong German patriot. “Nichts war ihm unsympathischer, als das Coquettiren Deutscher mit dem Auslande” (“Erinnerung”, above, n. 3, p. 457).
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• Kolbe, “Ueber den Zustand der Chemie in Frankreich”, Journal für praktische Chemie, 110 (1870), 173–83 (174, 181–82); “Chemische Ungebühr und Unsitte”, ibid., 112 (1871), 399–408; “Chemischer Rückblick auf das Jahr 1872”, ibid., 114 (1873), 461–70 (461–66); “Chemischer Rückblick auf das Jahr 1874”, ibid., 118 (1875), 449–56 (449); “Zeichen der Zeit: I”, ibid., 122 (1876), 268–78 (269). In several of these essays, he asserted that the French lack not only quality teachers and educational institutions, but also the necessary “scientific seriousness and moral force”. Probably the most dyspeptic of his many blasts against the French were some “Bemerkungen” directed at Wurtz (ibid., 115 [1873], 327–29), in which, inter alia, he refers to the “well-known dainty vanity” of the French, and comments that “a Frenchman never errs, or rather he never admits to an error”.
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• Kolbe, “Kritik” (above, n. 21), p. 148; “Meine Betheiligung” (above, n. 5), 131, 516.
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• Kolbe, “Chemischer Rückblick auf das Jahr 1871 ”, Journal für praktische Chemie, 112 (1872), 464–68 (465); “Rückblick auf 1872” (above, n. 26), pp. 463–70; “Rückblick auf 1873” (n. 19) pp. 421–25; “Die Hydrazine und ihre Verbindungen”, ibid., 121 (1876), 315–96 (323–25).
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• Kolbe was an excellent writer, and many of his criticisms were just; all of his obituarists mention his mastery of written German. However, he harbored the common delusions (of a piece with his conservatism in other areas) that there was a happy time, long before the present corrupt age, when all educated people wrote “classic” German; and that philology was properly a prescriptive rather than a descriptive enterprise. In some cases he was simply parochial: for example, he thought that the Berzelian “schwefelsaures Bleioxyd” was much superior to the Frenchified “Bleisulfat” (Journal für praktische Chemie, 112, 242). In this regard, Thomas Lounsbury has trenchantly observed: “. . . no one who has once taken the language under his care can ever again be really happy. That way misery lies” (The Standard of Usage in English, Harper, 1908, p. 11).
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• Kolbe, “Kritische-chemische Gänge: IV”, (above, n. 20), p. 372n. His student and biographer Richard Anschütz also noted Kekulé’s physical decline, beginning around 1870: August Kekulé, 2 vols. (Berlin: Verlag Chemie, 1929), 1, 369, 415–16.
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• Kekulé was born in 1829. Erlenmeyer (born 1825) and Butlerov (born 1828) are exceptions to this generalization. They were both strongly influenced by Kekulé, from 1856. Frankland (born 1825) also became a structuralist. The oldest active structural chemist was perhaps Wilhelm Heintz at Halle (born 1817).
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• Hartley, Studies, pp. 219–20, quoting Armstrong.
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• A. Claus, “Ueber die chemische Constitution der Diglycolsäure und der Glycolamidsäuren”, Journal für praktische Chemie, 111 (1871), 123–27; idem, “Ueber die Structurformeln”, ibid., 266–72; A. Butlerov, “Ueber die verschiedenen Erklärungsweisen einiger Fälle von Isomerie”, Zeitschrift für Chemie, 2 (1863), 500–34 (501–6); idem, Lehrbuch der Chemie (Leipzig, 1868), pp. 36–37; W. Heintz, “Zur Geschichte der Erkenntnis der Constitution der Diglycolsäure . . .” Journal fur praktische Chemie, 3 (1871), 69–72; Lothar Meyer to Kolbe, 13 October 1871 (Deutsches Museum Bibliothek, Munich, MS. 3531); E. Erlenmeyer to Kolbe, 28 June 1871 (Deutsches Museum MS. 3551).
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• Frankland to Kolbe, 19 April 1871 (Deutsches Museum MS. 3567); Frankland to Kolbe, 23 September 1883 (Deutsches Museum MS. 3573—quoted).
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• L. Meyer to Kolbe, 13 October 1871 (Deutsches Museum MS. 3531).
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• J. Wislicenus to Kolbe, 24 November 1877 (Deutsches Museum MS. 3550).
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• Ernst Beckmann, a former assistant to Kolbe, was Wislicenus’ guide: Ernst Beckmann, “Johannes Wislicenus”, Berichte der Deutschen Chemischen Gesellschaft, 37 (1904), 4861—4946 (4888); repeated in G. Lockemann, “Ernst Beckmann”, ibid., 61 (1928), 87-130A (92A). Beckmann, who took this as a sign of future changes, thought he also “muss verschwinden”; but Wislicenus persuaded him to stay. To Beckmann’s surprise, Wislicenus was no ogre, and Wislicenus soon converted him to modern structuralist views. They became fast friends, despite a substantial difference in age, and ultimately Beckmann succeeded Wislicenus at Leipzig.
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• One example of several cases where I would judge Kolbe’s censure to be justified is “Rückblick auf 1874” (above, n. 26), pp. 453–55. Other examples may be found in Journal für praktische Chemie, 111, 133 and 112, 255.
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• E. Reichenbach and F. Beilstein, “Untersuchungen über Isomerie in der Benzoëreihe. Dritte Abhandlung: Ueber die Natur der sogenannten Salylsäure”, Annalen der Chemie und Pharmacie, 132 (1864), 309–21 (311).
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• Kolbe, “Ueber die chemische Natur der Salylsäure”, Journal für praktische Chemie, 120 (1875), 151–57.
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• E.g., Kolbe, Das chemische Laboratorium der Universität Marburg (Brunswick, 1865), pp. 108—9, admitting a mistake of his which Kekulé Jhad publicly corrected, regarding the product of electrolysis of succinic acid. He admitted some degree of error in his polemic with Williamson in Journal fir praktische Chemie, 115 (1873), 124-25n., and ibid., 131 (1881), 31 in.
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• For failed predictions see e.g. Kohlenwasserstoffe (above, n. 15), pp. 9–10, 17–18, 28; Das chemische Laboratorium der Universität Leipzig (Brunswick, 1872), p. 152; Journal für praktische Chemie, 118 (1874,), 91; and “Chemische Constitution des Benzols und Phenols und einiger Derivate derselben”, ibid., 122 (1876), 347–55 (348–50).
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• See especially Larry Laudan, Science and Hypothesis: Historical Essqys on Scientific Methodology (Boston: Reidel, 1981), pp. 9–15, 72–127;, and John A. Schuster and Richard R. Yeo, eds., The Politics and Rhetoric of Scientific Methodology: Historical Studies (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1986). On the vogue ofinductivism in chemistry, see Nicholas Fisher, “Avogadro, the Chemists, and Historians of Chemistry”, History of Science, 20 (1982), 77–102, 212–31, esp. pp. 90–92.
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• Rocke, “Methodology and Its Rhetoric in Nineteenth-Century Chemistry: Induction versus Hypothesis”, under consideration for publication.
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• Kolbe, ed. n., Journal fur praktische Chemie, 111 (1871), 122–23n.
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• Kolbe, “Ueber die chemische Constitution der elementaren Moleküle”, Journal für praktische Chemie, 115 (1873), 119–26 (120); “Rückblick auf 1874” (above, n. 26), p. 449; “Kritik” (above, n. 21), p. 148; and “Reale Typen” (above, n. 20).
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• Kolbe, ed. n., Journal für praktische Chemie, 125 (1878), p. 160; “Chemischer Traum” (above, n. 20), pp. 443–44.
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• Kolbe, “Meine Betheiligung” (above, n. 5), 132, 405.
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• L. Meyer to Kolbe, 30 January 1881 (Deutsches Museum MS. 3535); Wislicenus to Kolbe (above, n. 36). Meyer specifically mentioned his teacher Neumann as inculcating conventionalist hypothetico-deductive ideas. Kenneth Caneva has persuasively argued that Neumann was one of a small group of physicists who were the first to embrace the method of hypothesis in the 1830s: “From Galvanism to Electrodynamics: The Transformation of German Physics and Its Social Context”, Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences, 9 (1978), 63–I59–
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• Frankland to Kolbe, 19 April 1871 (above, n. 34).
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• Kekulé accurately referred to the “Hypothesenreichtum der Radicaltheorie” (Lehrbuch, above, n. 12,1, 77), and Kolbe’s theoretical brilliance was founded upon skilled and productive use of this richness in hypotheses. In his letter to Kolbe cited above (n. 35), Meyer emphasized his regard for Kolbe’s masterly use of “theoretische Speculation”.
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• Aspects of Kolbe’s conservatism have already been cited. For criticisms of materialism, see e.g. “Zustand” (above, n. 26), p. 181; “Kritik” (above, n. 21), p. 152; and “Meine Betheiligung” (above, n. 5), 131 504, and 132 375, 406–7. His opposition to Realschulen was very often expressed, e.g. in “Meine Urtheile über Adolf Baeyer” (above, n. 18). Although musically inclined, the most recent composer Kolbe admired was Beethoven: “Vertrauliches Schreiben” (above, n. 22), p. 469; E. Meyer, “Erinnerung” (above, n. 3), p. 464.
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• In his autobiography, Frankland characterizes Kolbe as an agnostic (Sketches from the Life of Edward Frankland, ed. M. N. W. and S. J. C., London, 1902, p. 50). Despite the intrinsically trustworthy character of such testimony from a close friend, I am doubtful of the truth of this assertion, for several reasons. Colin Russell has shown that Frankland’s reminiscences were not infrequently incorrect, including, but not limited to, labeling others than Kolbe as “agnostics” (Lancastrian Chemist: The Early Years of Sir Edward Frankland [Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1986], and personal conversation and correspondence, for which I thank Professor Russell). The word “agnostic” did not even exist in the period (ca. 1847) to which Frankland applied it to Kolbe, so he was at least guilty of anachronistic use of language; this may (although admittedly need not necessarily) imply historical distortion. Third, the context in which he used the word is significant. At this time Frankland had temporarily become a “born again” Christian, and he said that he and Kolbe had long arguments over Frankland’s fundamentalist views. From his position at the extreme end of the religious spectrum, Frankland may easily have gained an erroneous impression of Kolbe’s views, or Kolbe may have used expressions in the heat of argument that did not really correspond to his innermost beliefs. Having once had such a row, it would be understandable if the two friends ever after avoided such discussions totally, each thereby maintaining incorrect impressions of his friend’s religious convictions. Finally, agnosticism simply does not appear to fit with Kolbe’s other views. The dutiful eldest son of a Lutheran minister, he was deeply conservative in every other respect, and often lambasted the “materialists”. The story of the Biblical quotation beneath the periodic chart in Kolbe’s laboratory which Wislicenus ordered removed (above, n. 37) is documented photographically. Georg Lockemann compared the two chemists by remarking that Wislicenus, too, was the son of a minister, but a man of radically different (i.e., free-thinking) theological views—which certainly implies that Kolbe held traditionally conservative religious convictions (Lockemann, “Beckmann”, op. cit., p. 92A). Interestingly, none of Kolbe’s obituarists say anything about his religious views, so clearly there is more work to be done here before we can come to any definite conclusions.
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