Chemical Education in the Habsburg Monarchy’s Universities and Technical Colleges around 1861

Abstract

Historians used to apostrophise the 19th century as the historic century, and there are many arguments in favour of this. From the point of view of historians living in the 20th century, however, it should be seen as the century of chemistry. Of all the fields of science which made great strides in the course of the 19th century, chemistry was the most successful. During the decades before World War I, chemistry used to be regarded as the the most important field of science, even by those contemporaries who had little or no idea about chemistry. This was because of the increasing impact of the results of chemical research on everyday life. Chemistry was expected to be capable of finding answers to all problems of life in the near future. In this period, sometimes referred to as the age of imperialism, a generally held expectation was that chemists might play a much more important role in future wars than generals. Unfortunately this became true in some ways during World War I.