Chemical Sciences in the Modern World ed. by Seymour H. Mauskopf

Abstract

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 727 many people assume. Rather, technological development in both Rus­ sia and the Soviet Union proceeded in a series of “fits and starts,” with early success typically being followed by a slump. The author also examines the conflict between the technical intelligentsia and the Soviet state, especially focusing on the role of Peter Palchinskii, a Russian mining engineer. This book will be of great value to any reader interested in gaining a thorough understanding of the development of science in Russia and the Soviet Union. While the coverage is not exhaustive, the au­ thor provides a concise summary of the major trends and gives an up-to-date synthesis of recent scholarship in the field. The extensive notes and references for further reading are especially valuable. Nathan M. Brooks Dr. Brooks is an assistant professor of history at New Mexico State University. He is currently working on articles and a book manuscript on chemistry in Russia during the 19th century. Chemical Sciences in the Modern World. Edited by Seymour H. Mauskopf. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993. Pp. xxii + 417; notes, bibliography, index. $39.95. In May 1990 the Beckman Center for the History of Chemistry sponsored a conference on “Chemical Sciences in the Modern World”; this volume contains fifteen of the papers presented at that conference, augmented by three brief comments on the papers. For­ tunately for the editor, Seymour Mauskopf, for the participants, and for subsequent readers, the shrouding dust jacket of the volume will perish long before the book. The jacket reproduces the Art Deco (and Marxist-influenced?) conceptualization of A. Cressy Morrison: an upright, massively muscled and nearly nude male “Chemical In­ dustry” (bearing the “Production of Men’s Necessities” on a flat-earth tray) is supported by a kneeling, robed female, “Pure Science” (whose left arm, for reasons unknown, is considerably longer than her right). To the credit of the collected authors, two of them, Yakov Rabkin and John Kenly Smith, argue convincingly that circumstances may not be as the illustration ordains. In “Uses and Images of Instruments in Chemistry,” Rabkin, grieved by “the traditional emphasis historians of science have put on theory as the motor of scientific development” (p. 25), calls attention to the role of analytic instruments in chemical discoveries. His position is one with which some historians would agree, although they might grant more importance to the significant work of Alfred Chandler on the “motors” of industry, and they might have a less pronounced faith in the “progress” to which Rabkin sub­ scribes. In “The Evolution of the Chemical Industry: A Technological Perspective,” Smith affirms that the view on the jacket is far too “sim­ plistic” (p. 141), even when considering so short a time span as the 728 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE 20th century and so geographically limited an area as the United States. Readers of Technology and Culture will find much of interest in addi­ tion to Smith’s work. John Lesch describes the process of invention of the sulfa drugs: while bacteriologist Gerhard Domagk is usually credited as the sole discoverer, Lesch shows that chemists Fritz Mietzsch and Heinrich Hórlein also played significant roles, an exam­ ple of “rational engineering.” Robert Friedel discusses the emergence of the vision of the industrial chemist as “hero” and the persistence of that vision through the first decades of the 19th century. E. N. Brandt, a retired public relations executive for Dow Chemical Com­ pany, shows how that vision has faded, as the outcry over the use of alar and the use of napalm demonstrated. Christopher Hamlin ex­ plores problems of this sort in a fascinating way using three case histories of 18th- and 19th-century water analysis and Victorian sew­ age recycling. He establishes that when problems are “transcientific” (i.e., insoluble with the tools available), scientific experts speak for their own or for vested interests. Suzanne White (unfortunately un­ identified in the list of contributors) successfully exposes the problems that the post-1945 “chemo-gastric revolution” raised. She argues con­ vincingly that the Delaney Clause in the 1958 Food Additive Amend­ ment to the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Anti-adulteration Act (1906) resulted from...