Chemists for the common good

Klein, Ursula

Permalink

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/127960 Copy

Description

Title

Chemists for the common good

Author(s)

Klein, Ursula

Issue Date

2017-03-15

Keyword(s)

• History
• Chemistry

Date of Ingest

2025-04-22T14:21:44-05:00

Abstract

HIST Award address by Ursula Klein. Like their British, French and Swedish colleagues, the late eighteenth-century Prussian chemists performed technological experiments and works of invention. Franz Carl Achard transformed the laboratory of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences into a "beet factory" in order to test the production of beet sugar on a large technological scale. Martin Heinrich Klaproth, who had discovered uranium in 1789, performed experiments with a laboratory worker (Laborant) of the Royal Prussian Porcelain Manufactory in order to prepare "uranium yellow" to be used as a pigment for decorating porcelain. The Prussian chemists argued for the usefulness of chemistry, and they further identified distinct parts of chemistry – "metallurgical chemistry," "technical chemistry," "applied chemistry" as well as analytical methods – that matched more directly with practical fields. In the eyes of these chemists, scientific knowledge was an indispensable part of technological innovation and progress, which would promote the economy of their "fatherland" and the "common good."

Publisher

Division of the History of Chemistry

ISSN

1053-4385

Type of Resource

text

Genre of Resource

article

Language

eng

Permalink

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/127960

DOI

https://doi.org/10.70359/bhc2017v042p001

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2017 Division of the History of Chemistry

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