August Wilhelm Hofmann—“Reigning Chemist-in-Chief”

Meinel, Christoph (1992) August Wilhelm Hofmann—“Reigning Chemist-in-Chief”. ANGEWANDTE CHEMIE-INTERNATIONAL EDITION, 31 (10). pp. 1265-1282. ISSN 1433-7851, 1521-3773

Full text not available from this repository.

Abstract

One hundred and twenty-five years ago, on November 11th, 1867, the German Chemical Society of Berlin held its inaugural meeting. The main purpose of the Society was to unite pure and applied chemistry and to foster cooperation between academic research and the chemical industry. And, indeed, it soon became the major forum of German and even European chemistry. Its program clearly bears the hallmark of a single individual: August Wilhelm Hofmann, the Society's first president, who died 100 years ago. For his contemporaries, Hofmann represented a new type of chemistry professor. At no time since have professional chemists felt as abundantly endowed with potential for the future and with public esteem. Hofmann's portrait was monumental even then, and still today it would belong in any gallery devoted to our distinguished forebears. Anniversaries provide an opportunity to direct our attention toward the past-and thus to ourselves as well. We are, after all, heirs to that period from which the modern world derives its profile. Questions from our own time lead us to reacquaint ourselves with one of the founders of modern chemistry, but we may also benefit from a fresh look at an epoch which, beneath the surface of prosperity and progress, was as contradictory as our own, an epoch struggling to understand the role of science in the new industrial era.

Item Type: Article
Subjects: 500 Science > 540 Chemistry & allied sciences
900 History & geography > 990 General history of other areas
Divisions: Philosophy, Art History, History, and Humanities > Institut für Philosophie > Lehrstuhl für Wissenschaftsgeschichte (Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Christoph Meinel
Depositing User: Petra Gürster
Date Deposited: 02 Jul 2024 06:34
Last Modified: 02 Jul 2024 06:34
URI: https://pred.uni-regensburg.de/id/eprint/54339

Actions (login required)

View Item View Item