French Chemists and the International Reorganisation of Chemistry after World War I

Abstract

Founded in 1919, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) was successor to the International Association of Chemical Societies (IACS), which had been founded eight years earlier at the initiative of Albin Haller. The statutes of the IUPAC (like those of the IACS) were written in French, and it was agreed that the IUPAC's administrative headquarters should be in Paris. With these arrangements in place, the role of French chemists generally, and of Haller and Charles Moureu in particular, assumed crucial importance. In 1927, on the occasion of the centenary of Marcelin Berthelot's birth, plans were laid for an international centre for chemistry in Paris, soon to be known as the Maison de la Chimie. From the start, the Maison de la Chimie project was led by the French, most conspicuously by Jean Gérard, general secretary of the Société de chimie industrielle and of the IUPAC. Gérard's contribution to a number of national and international committees, notably for scientific documentation, left an enduring legacy. The years between 1918 and 1927, especially 1918–1919, were decisive for the rebuilding, on many fronts, of international networks embracing individuals and institutions recently separated by war. This article examines the particular case of chemistry, with reference to this wider context and to the widely shared determination to fashion an organisation that would transcend national boundaries and embrace both the pure and the applied aspects of the discipline.