Italian

In the XVIII century Chemistry was acknowledged as an independent science, thank to a true revolution in its theoretic formulation and experimental procedures: systematic use of quantitative determinations of physical quantities as weight, volume, temperature and pressure, allowed to express as numbers the results of experiments and to formulate the first empirical laws on matter composition and combination ratios.

Coincidence of times and places between this revolution and the French one is certainly non casual and witness as the evolution of chemical though was by then fully integrated into the cultural and social milieu of the time. In England, Edmund Burke connected Joseph Priestley’s radical and materialist ideas, and the nature of gases he had discovered and studied, with the wild climate that in France had led to the scaffold even the Queen, exhorting that, at least in England, Chemical Revolution would be stopped [1].

Identification and use of gaseous substances allowed to finally build the so long dreamed flying machines to leave earth: the enthusiasm for this fulfilment is shown, for instance, in Vincenzo Monti’s Ode al Signor di Montgolfier (Ode to Mr. Montgolfier).

Chemical XIX century opened with the spread use of Volta’s pile to decompose substances into their elemental constituents, never identified before. Champion of this technique was Humphrey Davy which, in the space of time of a week, obtained two new elements, potassium and sodium, and then, within one year, also barium, calcium and strontium. As an acknowledgment of his scientific value, he got a pass to cross an enemy country and reach Paris, to receive, from Napoleon himself, a golden medal.

Davy was not only a great chemist, but also a charming speaker, who read his lectures at the Royal Institute of London, in front of a numerous and interested audience of noble and common people: set free from its mysterious origins and its obscure language, Chemistry was by then the most fashionable science. In Davy’s scientific language, J. T. Coleridge looked for enrichment to his own poetic reserve of metaphors [2], while Mary Shelley conceived Frankenstein character after having seen Davy’s experiments on electricity. The literary world had indeed changed its attitude toward Chemistry: Sherlock Holmes was no more a swindling alchemist living in smoky rooms, but a modern scientist who joined astonishing logic capacities to an accurate knowledge of modern Analytical Chemistry techniques [3].

Simultaneously to that of Davy, flourished in England the genius of Dalton who, starting from quantitative laws on substances combination ratios, gave scientific consistency to the atomic theory of Greek philosopher: he attributed differences between elements, the chemical individuals, to differences in their atoms’ weights. Although not visible, these elemental particles were different, no more by shape and dimensions (immeasurable parameters) but by a precise physical quantifiable quantity, their weight. Long before physicists could demonstrate the existence of atoms and could explain their inner structure, chemists, on the basis of more and more convincing experimental proofs, had acquired awareness that matter should be constituted by elementary particles. In the same way, laws of electrolysis, stated by Michael Faraday (1834) and electrolytic dissociation law by Svante Arrhenius (1884) led to the unavoidable conclusion that the electrical charge too should be constituted by discrete entities which, only at the end of the century, physicists would identify with electrons (1897).

Although, at the half of XIX century, the general climax of political restoration had run the risk to be accompanied from a chemical restoration, which tried to get rid of the concept of atoms, the first International Congress of Chemistry, held at Karlsruhe in 1860, opened the road to the explanation of corpuscular theories, defining and clarifying concepts of element, atom and molecule. Soon after, the discover of the periodic reproduction of properties of elements, justified half a century later by the formulation of electronic configurations, put chemistry in the singular condition of self establishing an objective criterion to classify substances it studies. Protagonist of this Congress, and inspiring of the periodic law of the elements, was a chemist from Palermo, Stanislao Cannizzaro, who, just owing to his value of scientist shown in that occasion, was appointed from the new born Italian government, to various public charges and to effectively contribute to its social, industrial and cultural growth.

At the end of the XIX century, Chemistry closed the ring of its evolution, going back to be technology, as it had been at its origins: but, while then chemists followed technicians to help them to understand the working of procedures and to change with empirical principles rules, in order to improve quality of products, now it was, the chemists who traced the road and set up or improved procedures, that afterward technicians would turn in industrial processes, to obtain new products to conveniently replace the natural ones. Among the several contributions chemistry gave to the industrial growth, it is enough here to remember the one to synthesise colouring matters which, among the others, had a first rank role in history of Arts; they offered to XIX century painters a choice of colours so rich to let them realize innovating and revolutionary ideas concerning their style and technique. Without the availability of these new colour nuances (and of their stability and yield) these ideas would have been only speculations and couldn’t be transformed into the masterpieces we can enjoy.

The ancillary science went a long way: it is still to day at service of other sciences, but now its role is basic. As for Physics, also the prodigious improvements of Biology in the XX century are partially based on theories and techniques distinctive of Chemistry: it goes further in its ambiguous situation of having a specific field of action, but of still playing a strategic and determining role in several fields of knowledge and technology. Chemistry, a science born to give immortality, according to the aims of mystic alchemists, has become a leading science, but it pays for it, as it is generally charged to give death, being considered responsible for the incorrect use of its results. Its rescuing power is clearly shown by the history of Primo Levi, a Jewish Italian chemist, who found in it, not only a mean to physically survive in the Auschwitz hell, but also a reason to take off from the moral and psychological dejection in which his staying in a concentration camp should surely have carried him [4].

Bibliography

• E. Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1790, quoted by [2]
• D. Knight, Chemistry in Britain, 1983, 578
• C.A. Lucy, Journal of Chemical Education, 2000, 77, 459
• P. Levi, Se questo è un uomo, Luigi Einaudi Editore, Torino, 1958

Iconography

• http://webexhibits.org/pigments/indiv/i/32mineral/malachite.jpg
• http://www.seval-impianti.it/img/rame.jpg
• http://www.naturopatia.com/chisiamo/paracelso.jpg
• http://www.vnh.org/CHEMCASU/images/History010.jpg
• http://www.astrocosmo.cl/imagenbi/v_pile.gif
• http://fargo.itp.tsoa.nyu.edu/~lewis/electricity/images/davy.gif
• http://www.astrosurf.com/lombry/Physique/dalton-john.jpg
• http://www.homeworkuk.fsnet.co.uk/gfxs/faraday.jpg
• http://helios.unive.it/~chem2000/immagini/CANNIZZ.jpg

Further readings

I. Asimov, A Short History of Chemistry, 1965

P. Ball, Bright Earth: The Invention of Colour. Oxford Paperbacks, 2001

O. Sacks, Uncle Tungsten, 2001

P. Strathern, Mendeleyev’s dream, Penguin Books, London, 2000

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