Learning lessons from the history of chemistry

Existing histories claim new theories change what chemists do. For example, they attribute the rise of organic synthesis to 19th century structural theory. That’s an attractive proposition. It’s also deeply problematic. If structure drove the development of synthetic organic chemistry, then how could synthesis remain chemists’ dominant method of structure determination until well into the 20th century?

Questions like this drew me from chemistry into its history. Twenty years on, I believe I’ve found some answers. My work shows how chemists used new experimental approaches, combined with what I’ve called ‘laboratory reasoning,’ to bridge wet chemistry and abstract concepts, creating the molecular world. My account is built on practice-based breakthroughs, beginning with chemistry’s move into lampworked glassware. Chemists had always used furnace-blown glassware. But apparatus they made themselves from glass tubing using a glassblowing torch opened fresh experimental possibilities. This ‘glassware revolution’ began a new phase of innovation in chemistry’s tools and methods, changing how labs were built and driving advances in the science. One of these – chemists’ encounter with the limits of analysis – prompted the turn to synthesis. Synthesis transformed understanding of organic compounds. It also introduced the problem of how to characterise and differentiate synthetic products – a problem chemists solved in glass. Chemistry’s 19th century development depended on lampworked glassware.