Morell - The Chemist Breeders, The Research Schools of Liebig and Thomas Thomson

THE CHEMIST BREEDERS: THE RESEARCH SCHOOLS
OF LIEBIG AND THOMAS THOMSON
By J. B. MORRELL*
IT IS a just common-place that during the nineteenth century the activity

known as science became professionalized.! Though this process took place in
Published by Maney Publishing (c) Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry
different countries at different times, its general characteristics are not elusive.
One can point to the rapid growth of specialization and to the equally significant
increase of self-consciousness among scientists. This shared awareness of
their changing social and intellectual roles displayed itself most obviously in
the formation of pressure groups and of specialized societies such as the British
Association for the Advancement of Science (founded 1831) and the Chemical
Society of London (founded 1841). Thirdly the extent of public recognition
afforded to scientists and science was increased, through patronage dispensed,
for instance, by government and by teaching institutions such as universities.
Nor must we ignore the creation of more full-time jobs in science and of assured
career structures which at their best were regularly expanding. Finally the
first half of the nineteenth century saw the development of laboratory-based
methods of teaching and the associated growth of research schools, some of
which were institutionally financed. Clearly some of the main features of the
professionalization of science were closely connected. There is no doubt, for
instance, that the expansion of specialization and of good career prospects for
trained and qualified specialists was associated with the growth of research
schools centred on laboratories in which ambitious disciples devotedly served
an apprenticeship and afterwards produced knowledge under the aegis of a
revered master of research.
Few would dispute that Liebig's opening of his chemistry laboratory in
1824 at the University of Giessen was a crucial event in the history of nine-
teenth-century science. Yet Liebig's was by no means the first chemical
laboratory in a European· university or university-level teaching institution
to which students were regularly admitted.2 In Paris, for instance, the Ecole
Poly technique offered laboratory instruction in chemistry from 1795. Even
within the German universities, courses of practical chemistry had been made
available from 1810 by Stromeyer at the University of G5ttingen, from 1820
* Department of Social Sciences, University of Bradford, Bradford 7, Yorkshire.

1 Useful surveys are provided by: E. Ashby, Technology and the Academics, London,
1958; D. S. L. Cardwell, The Organisation of Science in England: A Retrospect, London,
1957; and E. Mendelsohn, "The Emergence of Science as a Profession in Nineteenth Century
Europe", in K. Hill (ed.), The Management of Scientists, Boston, 1964.
2 W. A. Smeaton, "The early history of laboratory instruction in chemistry at the
Ecole Poly technique, Paris, and elsewhere", Annals of Science, 10, 224-34, 1954.
AMBIX Vol. XIX Part 1 March 1972

2 J. B. MORRELL
by J. N. Fuchs at the University of Landshut in Bavaria, and again from 1820

by D6bereiner at the University of Jena. Further north in 1808 Berzelius had
opened a teaching laboratory for a few students at the Collegium lVledicumin
Stockholm, though it was his own private laboratory, first situated in Hisinger's
house and then in the Swedish Academy of Sciences, which his more famous
pupils attended.3
Nevertheless Liebig's was the first institutional as opposed to private

laboratory in which students experienced systematic preparation for chemical
research, and in which they were deliberately groomed for membership of a
highly effective research schooL Though there are gaps in our understanding
and knowledge of Liebig's career at Giessen, its broad shape and content are
well known. Without denying that he made important contributions to
chemical knowledge perse, such as his work on ethyl and benzoyl radicals, we
should pay attention also to the ways in which he decisively created the new
conditions in which such knowledge was produced. In particular one could
profitably try to analyse the intellectual, institutional, technical, psychological
and financial circumstances, whether necessary or desirable, out of which
Liebig fashioned his famous schooL Moreover at the present stage of develop-
ment of history of science considered as a historical discipline, it may also be
fruitful to attempt a tentative comparative study of Liebig's research school
and of a similar though less effective one run by one of his immediate chemical
predecessors and contemporaries. The outstanding British candidate for
such a comparative study is Thomas Thomson who having been appointed in
1817 as lecturer in chemistry at the University of Glasgow was elevated the
following year to the newly-created Regius chair which he held until his death
in 1852. In contrast with his eminent British chemical contemporaries such
as Humphry Davy, John Dalton and William Hyde Wollaston, Thomson
occupied a university teaching post from which he tried to create a research
school based on his teaching laboratory. Though Davy and Dalton were
teachers and did produce a few distinguished pupils, they did not share one of
Thomson's most cherished ambitions, i.e. "to erect a laboratory upon a proper
scale to establish a real chemical school in Glasgow and to breed up a set of
young practical chemists".4 In contrast, too, with his fellow British chemistry
professors active in the 1820S, he was ambitious not only to develop the practical
teaching of his subject in the university laboratory he opened to students in
1818 but also to create a research school working in it under his direction.
These ambitions were uncommon at that time. They stand in sharp contrast,
for instance, to the indifference shown to the practical teaching of chemistry
J. E. J orpes, J ac. Berzelius: His Life and Work, Stockholm, 1966, 31-3.
3
Thomson to Robert Jameson, professor of natural history at the University

4 of
Edinburgh (1804-54), 9 September 1817 (Pollok-Morris MSS).
THE CHEMIST BREEDERS 3
by Thomas Charles Hope, Black's successor in the chemistry chair at the

University of Edinburgh.5 Such diverse authorities as Thomas Andrews and
Ernst von Meyer rightly regard Thomson's as the first school of practical
chemistry to be established in a British university.6 For that reason inter alia
this paper will try to give a tentative comparative analysis of two university
schools of practical chemistry, each of which was the pioneer in its own country
during the I8zos. In accord with that aim I shall divide the paper into two
parts. Firstly I shall postulate a conjectural model of what may be called an
ideal research school by drawing attention to the circumstances under which a
research school could nlost successfully operate in the first half of the nine-
teenth century. Secondly I shall use these suggestions as a means of com-
paring the research schools which Liebig and Thomson ran. As my aim is
deliberately restricted to examining just one very important aspect of their
professorial work, I shall avoid giving a comprehensive account of their uni-
versity careers. Liebig is a famous figure in history of science. I have relied,
therefore, to a large extent on secondary sources for information about his
career.7 For the less known Thomson I have relied more on primary sources
and on some previously unexploited manuscript materiaLS
I
In trying to postulate and analyse the most propitious conditions under
which a laboratory-based research school could flourish in the first half of the
nineteenth century, we must clearly take account of the chief elements of such
an on-going enterprise whether they were intellectual, institutional, technical,
psychological, or financiaL Only if we do this can we fully understand what
was at the time very much an entrepreneurial activity.
Clearly the most important person in a research school was its director.
His intellectual function was to offer and supervise a programme of work, too
large for he himself to accomplish unaided, which his students implemented.
5 J. B. Morrell, "Practical chemistry in the University of Edinburgh, 1799-1843",

A mbix, 16, 66-80, 1969.
6 P. G. Tait and A. Crum Brown (eds.), The Scientific Papers of Thomas Andrews,
London, 1889,394; E. von Meyer, A History of Chemistry (tr. G. McGowan), London, 1898,
194,592.
7 The basic source remains J. Volhard, Justus von Liebig, 2 vols., Leipzig, 1909, of which a
reprint is badly needed. A useful guide is C. Paolini, Justus von Liebig: Eine Bibliographie
samtlicher Veroffentlichungen, mit biographischen A nmerkungen, Heidelberg, 1968.
8 For the time being the basic accounts of Thomson are Anon. (R. D. Thomson),
"Biographical Notice of the late Thomas Thomson", The Glasgow Medical Journal, 5, 69-80
and 121-53, 1857; W. Crum, "Sketch of the Life and Labours of Dr. Thomas Thomson",
Proceedings of the Philosophical Society of Glasgow, 3, 250-64, 1855.
4 J. B. MORRELL
This programme was frequently related not only to the frustrations he suffered
and the inspirations he enjoyed during his early career, but also to the state and
status of his subject and of its various branches. Almost invariably the
programme was more easily and more effectively initiated if the director had
acquired in his subject a growing or established reputation \vhich was consonant
with his ambitions. If, however, he lacked the reputation to sustain his
school then problems concerning his credibility and indeed competence inevi-
tablyarose. It is obvious that publication was closely related to his reputation.
Some publication was necessary if a merely local reputation were to be con-
verted into a national or better still an international one. Yet publication
could have its dangers. For instance, if the director of a promising school
published research which aroused hostile criticism from acknowledged leaders
in his subject, then the feasibility of his ambitions could be questioned. If at
the worst both his competence and character were effectively attacked, his
reputation was virtually destroyed. Generally speaking the most favourable
situation was one in which the director's reputation in his subject advanced
neither in front of nor behind his ambitions for his school.
Manpower, too, was important for the creation, maintainance and expan-
sion of a research group. Quite simply there had to be a regular supply of
motivated students who were keen to apprentice themselves to a recognized
or emerging master of his subject. With respect to the steady availability
of students the university teacher was better placed than his contemporaries
who were employed in non-teaching institutions or as merely occasional
teachers. The motives of these student-acolytes were, of course, very varied.
Some wanted to acquire intellectual and practical command of their subject
through close contact with a master, particularly if he offered a unique and
superior type of training at a very competitive financial rate. No doubt all
the students expected that even a tenuous connection with an established
teacher would further their careers. No doubt, too, the more successful
students anticipated that through their master's reputation and contacts they
would more easily penetrate the upper echelons 'of the prestigious scientific
networks of which they wished to be members. The most ambitious ones
perhaps saw themselves first as disciples of their master and later as apostles
who would diffuse his work and methods by establishing their own schools
modelled on his. A last motive that must not be forgotten was the award of a
reputable and useful qualification, though in some institutions such a public
label of competence in scientific research was not available for much of the
nineteenth century. At best a qualification could increase the career prospects
of a student, and for the master it was a singularly impeccable way of increasing
the public recognition afforded to him and his institution. Of course the value
of a research qualification such as the Ph.D. varied widely: in pre-bureaucratic
institutions it depended largely on the reputation of the master. If his stand-

ing in his subject were low, the label he dispensed was relatively worthless; if,
however, it were high, that label was a precious acquisition which could act as
an "open sesame" to more attractive jobs.
The nature of the area of enquiry cultivated by the school and the character
of the techniques it employed to explore that area could be vital to its success
or failure. Generally it would appear that success was most likely to be
achieved if a set of relatively simple, fast and reliable experimental techniques
could be steadily applied by both brilliant and ordinary students to the solution
of significant problems in a new or growing field of enquiry. The application
of such techniques allowed the systematic intellectual occupation and coloniza-
tion of certain areas of research which sometimes become the "property" of
the school. If these techniques were"successfully applied to a body of related
problelns then the specific identity and reputation of the school were consoli-
dated; so, too, was its esprit de corps. Perhaps most important of all, the use
of a set of relatively simple, fast, and reliable experimental methods allowed
those students who were less than brilliant to do and to publish competent work.
When these techniques were deployed on a large scale a knowledge factory was
the likely result. This was characterized by the steady and systematic pro-
duction of reliable experimental results by ordinary students whose scientific
mediocrity had been converted into scientific competence by the acquisition
and use of these very techniques. In this way a large research school could
realize Francis Bacon's dream of levelling up men's wits.9 If, however, the
director of research lacked such techniques or if he intended to enter a developed
field of enquiry where strong competition was to be met, then clearly the
chances of dominant success were diminished. When deficiencies of field of
enquiry and of technique existed together in a particular research school, the
resulting work was likely to be sporadic in both quality and quantity.
If a school wanted a more than local reputation it had to publish its work.
Thus relatively easy access to publication opportunities, or best of all control
of them, enabled a school to convert private work into public knowledge and
fame. Publication was vital to the success of any ambitious research school.
Otherwise its reputation remained restricted and its students lacked the spur
of seeing their names in print. It was sufficient if the director had access, for
instance, to journals published by learned societies of which he was an influential
member or to proprietary journals published by colleagues or friends. However
the most desirable situation clearly occurred when the director controlled and
published his own journal. In that case he himself, his friends, and his better
9 F. Bacon, Novum Organon, aphorism 122 in J. M. Robertson (ed.), The Philosophical

Works of Francis Bacon, London, 1905, 297.
6 J. B. MORRELL
students published without obstacle in a journal which created and consolidated

the status of his school, and publicised its specific field and style of work. In
short, an ambitious research school had to take the full measure of Faraday's
famous maxim: "work, finish, publish" .10
I have restricted discussion so far to the importance of the director's pro-
gramme, the students, the field of study, the techniques employed and publica-
tion. Yet for a potentially valid intellectual programme to be implemented,

power was necessary. Quite simply the director had to possess or be rapidly
gaining sufficient power within his institution to realize his ambitions. Such
power allowed or produced effective control by him of his research enterprise:
it was particularly vital when problems concerning innovation or expansion
arose. If the director's power were insufficient, he was forced to expend time
and effort in increasing it and in coping with the difficulties its shortage produced.
These deficiencies of personal power and self-determination within his institution
could seriously deflect him from running his school which he regarded as his
chief responsibility and ambition. They could, of course, take many forms.
For instance, a large load of low-level teaching students for whom his subject
was subsidiary in importance, or of administration, sapped time and energy.
Less obviously, but just as insidiously, problems concerning status would be
demoralizing. If the director had to concern himself with the status of his
students, if his subject were generally regarded as being subsidiary or peripheral
to the chief aims of his institution, or if he himself had to fight incessant battles
to maintain or increase his own institutional status, then his confidence and
that of his students in his ability to run a school could be seriously eroded.
The creation, maintainance and growth of the school's loyalty, cohesion and
confidence depended, too, on the director's charismatic powers, which at best
reinforced his institutional power. Though the notion of "charisma" has been
subjected to criticism, the term is useful if it conveys the idea of extraordinarily
effective, indeed messianic, leadership.ll Such charisma, which was most
effectively exerted in informal pre-bureaucratic contexts, helped to draw
students in sufficient numbers to make the school viable. It enforced the stan-
dards and styles of work adopted by the schooL It exacted from the students
an unflagging almost fanatical devotion to research, particularly at times of
intellectual failure and disappointment, and on occasion it also imposed fervent
specializati()n. It contributed strongly to the school's sense of its own novel
and distinctive identity and importance. And it compelled unquestioning and
unswerving loyalty to the master and his schooL Though a research school
existed primarily to advance knowledge, its atmosphere could be highly evan-
10S. P. Thompson, Michael Faraday, his Life and Work, London, 1898,267.
11H. Wolpe, "A critical analysis of some aspects of charisma", The Sociological Review,
16, 305-18, 1968.
gelical as the prophet broke through accepted conventions and led his devoted
followers into unexplored and promising lands of enquiry. No wonder, then,
that disciple-fetishism arose once research schools produced these new con-
ditions in which knowledge was created.12 Indeed the extent to which students
\vished to be known as the pupils of a certain director indicates the strength
of his charisma.
Lastly, institutional support was desirable to allow the director to run his
school on a regular and permanent basis. Provided he had sufficient money
from fees, his salary, and his own pocket, to equip and maintain a laboratory,
it was of course possible for an ambitious man to build up a relatively small
research school. Unless he was rich, or charged a "realistic" fee, a financial
crisis almost invariably occurred when the financial loss he incurred in meeting
the necessary costs of running his laboratory became intolerable. At that
point of crisis he could either increase his fee, an act which was likely to reduce
the number of his students, or he could appeal to his institution for a form of
financial support which would at least not penalize him for being successful
with his laboratory students. If his institution reacted generously to his pleas
and his threats by, for instance, increasing his salary and by paying his neces-
sary expenses such as capital outlay, materials, apparatus, and assistance, then
financial restraints were removed. The director would thereby be enabled at
least to maintain the "crisis" number of students without penalizing himself
financially and without sacrificing his intellectual independence. In the most
favourable financial circumstances created by institutional support he could
reduce his laboratory fee, thus undercutting his rivals and encouraging even
more students to work under him. If, however, his institution or the patron
of his post responded with only marginal improvements or negatively, and if he
was unwilling to raise his laboratory fee, then the future was inevitably one of
stagnation or decline of the number. of students in his school. In that depres-
sing situation the director could try to move elsewhere for better institutional
support. If movement was not possible, his fate was the stoical or resentful
acceptance of institutional indifference or rejection. At the worst a combination
of lack of institutional support and decreasing annual remuneration of the
director could lead to the virtual extinction of a once flourishing school.
II
In discussing the research schools based on the university laboratories
which Liebig and Thomson ran, I shall apply to them the chief features of the
conjectural model in the order in which these were proposed in the first section
of this paper. Accordingly let us turn first to the programme of research the
12 The emergence of disciple-fetishism is stressed by Ashby (1), 26.

8 J. B. MORRELL
director envisaged or implemented and to the related question of his reputation

in the subject.
It would appear that the basis of Liebig's programme of research was the
development of reliable experimental methods of analysing organic compounds,
an ambition he realized between 1823 and 1830.13 Once he was armed with
such a \veapon, he successfully created and invaded what came to be known as
organic chemistry. His achievement in this field, such as the isolation, analysis
and synthesis of new compounds, his ,vork on radical theory, on the hydrogen
theory of acids and on agricultural chemistry, stands as a perpetual reminder
that he was largely responsible for the metamorphosis of animal and vegetable
chemistry into organic chemistry and biochemistry. This experimentally
based programme and accomplishment in organic chemistry was related to the
frustrations he endured as a young man. These disappointments had the
positive function of pushing him into actions he might otherwise not have
contemplated. His youthful ambition to be a chemist was hardly encouraged
by the formal teaching he received before October 1822 when he arrived in
Paris. At his local Gymnasium his hunger for chemistry was not satisfied by the
largely classical curriculum. Nor was his experimental work on fulminates
appreciated by the apothecary at Heppenheim to whom he was apprenticed for
ten months in the winter of 1819-20. When he attended in 1820-21 the lectures
on chemistry delivered at the new University of Bonn by Karl Wilhelm Kastner,
Liebig was unimpressed; and, in the following session when he followed Kastner
to the University of Erlangen, he discovered that Kastner's practical chemical
competence was so limited that he was unfamiliar with methods of mineral
analysis. In desperation, Liebig turned for intellectual succour to the lectures
on philosophy delivered that same session by the famous Schelling. The result
was even greater disillusion: Kastner was merely incompetent; but Schelling
was a fraud because his philosophy lacked a basis of real positive knowledge.
It is clear that after his experience of Schelling's Naturphilosophie Liebig had
little patience for some time with extravagantly speculative and confidently
deductive types of science.14
The more encouraging aspects of Liebig's early career were focused on the
Grand Duke of Hesse, Gay-Lussac and Alexander von Humboldt. Liebig was
highly indebted to the Duke's patronage not only for the free borrowing of
books from the ducal library at Darmstadt but also for two grants of money,
one to enable him to go to Bonn in 1820 and the second to permit him to go to
13 Liebig" tlUber einen neuen Apparat zur Analyse organischer Korper", Annalen der
Physik und Chemie, 21, 1-42, 1830; H. E. Roscoe, tlJustus Liebig", Nature, 8, 27-8, 1873.
14 For the early disappointments of Liebig's career, see Volhard (7), i, 13-23; and Justus
von Liebig, "An Autobiographical Sketch" in J. Campbell Brown, Essays and Addresses,
London, 1914, 27-43 (31-4).
Paris in 1822. It was then for the first time during his irregular education that
Liebig enjoyed positive inspiration. The lectures he heard in Paris during
1822-23 by Gay Lussac, Thenard and Dulong were refreshingly different from
Kastner's and Schelling's: their unpretentious empirical approach, reinforced
where possible by quantitative methods, focused attention on phenomena.
The following winter, as is well known, Liebig enjoyed the rare privilege of
working in the laboratory of Gay-Lussac whose situation did not allow him to
take more than the occasional student. From Gay-Lussac he learned practical
techniques of exact analytical chemistry a~d the less tangible arts of scientific
research. It was in Gay-Lussac's laboratory, too, that Liebig conceived the
ambition of founding in Germany on a permanent and not on an occasional
footing a teaching laboratory where he would be to his students what Gay-
Lussac had been to him.15 In addition the publication of a joint paper with
Gay-Lussac on silver fulminate confirmed his belief that organic chemistry in
general and isomerism in particular were fruitful fields of enquiry.16 His
problem at this stage of his career was to find a post, a difficulty solved primarily
by Humboldt. Through the very strong pressure Humboldt imposed on the
Grand Duke, Liebig was appointed, without the professoriate being consulted,
as extraordinary professor of chemistry at the University of Giessen on 26 May
1824. Once at Giessen he brooked no delay, rapidly established a small
teaching laboratory, and inspired by Gay-Lussac he began his work on im-
proving the methods of analysing organic compounds. In the mid 1820S very
few professors of chemistry in German universities possessed a laboratory to
which they regularly admitted students. Liebig's was therefore one of the
earliest in those universities in which systematic instruction in practical
chemistry was given. His entrepreneurial insight was also shown in his
choice of organic chemistry as his field of activity. When Liebig assumed his
chair, inorganic chemistry was attracting the attention of the more active
professors of chemistry in German universities. In particular, Christian
Gottlob Gmelin at Tiibingen, Heinrich Rose and Mitscherlich at Berlin, all of
whom had been pupils of Berzelius, and Stromeyer specialized in inorganic
15 Liebig's positive inspirations are described by Volhard (7), i, 8-9, 32-52; Liebig (14),
36-7; A. W. Hofmann, The Life-Work of Liebig, London, 1876,51-5; M. P. Crosland, The
Society of Arcueil, London, 1967, 433-6 and 439-41. It should be stressed that the
Grand Duke of Hesse responded to the pressure exerted on him by Kastner and by Schleier-
macher (the Duke's ~ecretary) by granting in 1822 and 1823 a total of 1680 fl. (£145) to
Liebig to enable him to study in Paris; this was more than the 1213 fl. (£104) paid out by
Liebig's father. Supported financially by his state and his father, Liebig made a flying
start to his career.
16 Gay-Lussac and Liebig, "Analyse du fulminate d'argent", Annales de Chimie et de
Physique, 25, 285-311, 1824. This paper was rapidly available in English in Annals of
Philosophy, 7, 413-26, 1824.
IO J. B. MORRELL
chemistry. 17 In the newly emerging field of organic chemistry, however, only

one German university professor, D6bereiner, had made a significant contribu-
tion.1s Liebig undoubtedly realized that Berzelius and Klaproth had brought
to near perfection quantitative methods of analysing inorganic substances
such as minerals.19 He therefore decided to pin his future on his ability to
develop simple and reliable methods of organic analysis without which progress
in organic chemistry was impossible. His acute premonition led him to

commit himself in the mid 1820S to a relatively unexplored new branch of
chemistry into which Dumas and ~erzelius were also moving, and not to a
developed or exhausted one.
At all times in Liebig's career his publications were recognized by the doyens
of his subject. Indeed the publication in 1824 of his joint paper with Gay-
Lussac fully confirmed his reputation with the leading French chemists,
particularly as Gay-Lussac rarely collaborated in this way with students.
During his first ten years at Giessen his published work continued to extend his
reputation in his subject, especially after he had perfected his methods of
analysing organic compounds. Berzelius, for instance, regularly praised his
work in his] ahres-Bericht. It is true that from the early 1830S he indulged
in many bitter chemical quarrels with ferocious energy. Yet even when he
was compelled to admit his mistakes, the basis of his reputation remained
unimpugned: as Partington pointed out, "he was unquestionably the greatest
chemist of his time ... ".20 At no time did his fellow chemists suspect that he
was not an asset to his subject.
When we turn to Thomson's programme of research we find it was in the
well-established fields of inorganic and mineralogical quantitative analysis.
In particular he tried desperately to determine atomic weights accurately and
to provide experimental justification for Prout's hypothesis. He fervently
believed that the "atomic labours", which occupied his opening five or six years
at Glasgow, would reveal those elusive quantitative laws of chemical affinity for
which chemists had hitherto sought so vainly;21 and he hoped that his related
work on mineralogy, done between 1825 and 1835, would elevate it to a
chemical science. This research programme was most ambitiously and abun-
dantly revealed in two books: An Attempt to Establish the First Principles of
17 J. R. Partington, A History of Chemistry, London, Ig64, iv, 180, I85-go, 205-11;
ibid., London, Ig62, iii, 659-60.
Partington (17), iv, 178-80.
18
Liebig (14), 38-9.

19
20 Partington (17). iv, 300.

21 W. H. Brock, "Dalton versus Prout: The Problem of Prout's Hypotheses" in D. S. L.
Cardwell (ed.), John Dalton and the Progress of Science, Manchester, Ig68, 240-58; and
Thomson to Dalton, 14 April 1823, in H. E. Roscoe and A. Harden, A New View of the
Origin of Dalton's Atomic Theory, London, I8g6, 177-8.
THE CHEMIST BREEDERS II
Chemistry by Experiment (1825), which he thought had raised chemistry to the

rank of a mathematical science;22 and his Outlines of Mineralogy, Geology, and
Mineral Analysis (1836), in which he arranged minerals on the basis of their
experimentally determined chemical composition and not of their physical
properties. Thomson did not pursue these enquiries alone. Between about
1819 and 1824 his students contributed to his published research by determining
in his laboratory the composition of more than a quarter of the salts in which he
was interested.23 Again, between 1825 and 1835, his laboratory students
analysed slightly more minerals than Thomson did;24 and 45 of these analyses
done by students were published in 1836. It appears then that between 1819
and 1835 Thomson ran a research school focused on three related aims: to put
Dalton's atomic theory on a wider and firmer experimental basis; to provide
conclusive experimental evidence to substantiate Prout's hypothesis that the
atomic weights of elements were whole-number multiples of that of hydrogen;
and to determine the chemical composition and formulae of all known minerals,
particularly those containing aluminium.
The origins of these connected programmes are quite clear. In the third
edition of his best-selling A System of Chemistry, Thomson gave the first printed
version of Dalton's atomic theory and applied it to acids, bases and salts.25
Again before the publication of the first part of Dalton's New System of Chemical
Philosophy Thomson had submitted in early r808 the first experimental illustra-
tion of the Law of Multiple Proportions.26 Thereafter Thomson acted as
Dalton's bull-dog as decades later Huxley fought for Darwin. Thomson was
again fast off the mark in espousing a new quantitative chemical cause when in
1815 he published Prout's anonymous paper on specific gravities of gases in his
own journal Annals of PhilosoPhy. 27 No wonder, then, that when he acquired
his laboratory at Glasgow he immediately set to work to establish by
experiment a coherent set of atomic weights which would confirm Prout's
hypothesis. This investigation of the composition and formulae of salts was
extended subsequently to encompass those of minerals. In replacing artificial
external features by the natural one of chemical composition as the basis of
classification of minerals, he realized his long-cherished ambition of elevating
22 Thomson to Dalton, 19 April 1825, in Roscoe and Harden (21), 178-9.

23 Thomson, A n A ttempt to establish the First Principles of Chemistry by Experi11zent,
London, 1825, i, 25; Thomson, "Reply to Berzelius's attack on his 'First Principles of
Chemistry"', Philosophical Magazine, 5, 217-23 (217), 1829.
24 Thomson, Outlines of Mineralogy, Geology, and Mineral Analysis, London, 1836, i, iii.
25 Thomson, A System of Chemistry (3rd ed.), Edinburgh, 1807, iii, 424-628.
26 Thomson, "On oxalic acid", Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London,
98, 63-95, 1808.
27 Anon. (W. Prout), <tOn the Relation between the Specific Gravities of Bodies in their
Gaseous State and the Weights of their Atoms" Annals of Philosophy, 6,321-30, 1815.
12 J. B. MORRELL
mineralogy to a full science.28 No doubt his private ambitions were to displace

Berzelius from his position as the European doyen of quantitative inorganic
analysis, to increase Britain's thin reputation in analytical chemistry, and of
course to add to his own.
Unlike Liebig Thomson had not enjoyed the benefits of working as a student
in the laboratory of a master chemist. He began his publishing career as an
assistant editor of the Supplement to the Third Edition of the Encyclopaedia

Britannica between 1796 and 1800. Indeed his long articles on chemistry and
mineralogy in that Supplement were published before his first research paper.29
In sharp contrast with Liebig he made his debut in print as an informed
encyclopaedic compiler and arranger of other chemists' work: he began his
chenlical career at the writing desk. Once the Supplement was published Thomson
exploited the popularity of chemistry in Edinburgh by making his living there
from 1800 to 1811 as a private teacher and as a textbook writer. From the
start his ambitions were high, though as a practical chemist he was self-taught.3~
Accordingly he seems to have introduced lecture demonstrations into his
teaching in autumn 1803, and by January 1807 he had opened a class in prac-
tical chemistry for about a dozen pupils restricted to those who attended his
lecture course.31 The capital cost of mounting this practical class must have
been considerable. Presumably he used part of the £600 he received in late
1806 from the Scottish Excise Board for the work he had done in 1805 with
Professors Hope and Coventry on the relative quantities of malt which could
be made from English and Scottish barley.32 The reasons which prompted
Thomson to create these opportunities for students to do practical chemistry
under his direction were probably pedagogic and entrepreneurial. He felt no
doubt on the basis of personal experience that mere lecturing was inadequate
to produce competent practical chemists. Perhaps, too, Thomson realized
that with the advent of Dalton's atomic theory, practical skill in analytical
work had assumed even greater importance. More basically, between 1807
28 See "Mineralogy", Supplement to the Third Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica

(2nd ed.), Edinburgh, 1803, ii, 192-261 (193, 199-200). The first edition of the Supplement
was published in 1800.
29 Thomson, "Experiments to determine whether or not fluids be conductors of caloric",
Nicholson's Journal, 4, 529-45, 180I.
30 He had been won to chemistry when he attended Professor Joseph Black's course of
lectures delivered in 1795-6 at the University of Edinburgh. Though Black was a master
of elegant lecture-demonstrations, he had no laboratory in which students could work.
31 Advertisements in the Edinburgh Evening Courant, 13 October 1803, 25 October 1806,
22 October 1807.
32 Scottish Excise Board Minutes, 24 November 1806, Scottish Record Office, Edinburgh.
Hope and Coventry (professor of agriculture, University of Edinburgh, 1790-1831) also
received £600 each for six months' work.
and 1811 his was the only course of practical chemistry available in Edinburgh.
As such it helped him in attracting students to both his classes. The com-
petition between chemistry teachers in 1806-7 in Edinburgh, though less than
at the turn of the century, was still sharp.33 Thomas Charles Hope, Black's
successor in the unsalaried chair of chemistry at the ·University, attracted 317
students ,vho revelled in his punctiliously organised and spectacular lecture-

demonstrations.34 In the private arena, the well-established John Murray
was the most formidable riva1.35 But neither Hope nor Murray ran a practical
class. Thomson's initiative in this respect no doubt helped him in the struggle
to gain and keep students. It must not be forgotten that, as long as students
paid a class-fee to individual teachers and not a sessional fee to an institution,
a teacher in a competitive situation was often stimulated to advertise and
introduce new practices in order to maintain and possibly to increase the size
of his class and of his remuneration.36
Though little is known about Thomson's Edinburgh practical class, one
point does seem clear. Around summer 1807 Thomson began work on the
quantitative analysis of minerals, this research being published in the Memoirs
of the Wernerian Natural History Society of which Thomson was a founder-
member. 37 That same year Thomson acted as Sir James Hall's chief adversary
in a number of debates between the Wernerians and the Huttonians in the
Royal Society of Edinburgh. In these discussions, Thomson acted as the
vehement spokesman for his friend Professor Robert Jameson, a leading
exponent in print of Werner's views.38 It seems likely therefore that his
33 In Autumn r800 chemistry courses were delivered in Edinburgh by no less than six
lecturers: Professor Hope, Thomas Thomson, John Murray, Dr. Briggs, John Thomson and
Henry Moyes. See advertisements in the Edinburgh Evening Co.urant, r8 October r800,
30 October r800 and r7 November r800.
34 Morrell (5), 67-8.
35 Perhaps it was not accidental that in the three sessions beginning in autumn r800,
r80r and r802 Thomson and Murray fought for the same audience by lecturing at the same
hour of the same day. Murray moved his hour in autumn r803. See the Edinburgh
Evening Co.urant, 9 & r8 October r800, 23 October r802, 29 October r803. Both men were
textbook writers and both published A System o.f Chemistry (Thomson r802, Murray r806).
36 D. J. Withrington, t<Education and Society in the Eighteenth Century" in N. T.
Phillipson and R. Mitchison (eds.), Sco.tland in the Age o.f Impro.vement, Edinburgh, 1970,
169-99. He rightly concludes (r92) that "in both schools and universities, throughout
the century, the elemental challenge of their teachers' declining incomes was the greatest
stimulus of all to a rethinking of their educational aims and practice".
37 Thomson, "An Analysis of Fluor-spar", Memo.irs o.f the Wernerian Natural Histo.ry
So.ciety, 1, 8-11, I8rI.
38 On 5 April 1807 Thomson read a paper on the geognosy of Werner at the Royal
Society of Edinburgh. Within a month on 4 May 1807 he replied to certain objections
raised by Sir James Hall against Werner's geognosy. Controversy again intensified in
J. B. MORRELL
commitment to Werner's mineralogy at this time directed his research into the
field of mineralogical analysis. It would also appear that Thomson was
teaching mineralogical analysis in his laboratory and maybe encouraging his
better pupils to do research. None of the pupils named in the solitary suriviv-
ing laboratory class list became well-known chemists. 39 Yet one of them, Charles
Mackenzie, published in 1811 an analysis of compact felspar which he had made
in Thomson's laboratory in 1807.40 Two other members of this laboratory class,

James Ogilby and Stewart Murray Fullerton, were active and committed
Wernerians.41 All this leads to the conjecture that in his Edinburgh laboratory
Thomson had created a very small embryonic research school working on
mineralogical analysis in a Wernerian framework. This laboratory enterprise
may have lasted from January 1807 to spring 1811 when Thomson finished
teaching in Edinburgh, though no separate newspaper advertisements for it
\vere apparently published after session 1807-8.
From 1811 to 1817 Thomson worked not as a regular teacher but as an
unofficial historian of the Royal Society of London and chiefly as the London-
based editor of his own scientific periodical Annals of Philosophy. Not un-
expectedly chemistry was the journal's dominant subject and its columns a
vehicle for Dalton's atomism and Prout's hypothesis. It was during this
London period, too, that Thomson set himself up as an authoritative judge of
European chemistry in his annual reports on the progress of science. No
wonder, then, that when in 1818 he was promoted to the chair of chemistry at
the University of Glasgow, he capitalized on his previous experience as a
teacher and on his chief intellectual commitments by trying to create a research
school working in his laboratory on inorganic and mineralogical chemistry in
support of Dalton's atomic theory and Prout's multiples hypothesis. At that
time his reputation was sufficient to carry such an ambitious programme:
early 1809 when on 6 February Sir James Hall read a paper in which he put some basic
geological questions to Thomson. See the entries for these dates in the Minute-Book of
the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Not one of these papers was published.
39 The nine pupils who attended his laboratory were Stewart Murray Fullerton, James
Ogilby, Charles Mackenzie, Patrick Mackenzie, Robert Chisholm, John Smith, Huggins,
Benjamin Travers and George Rees. See: R. D. Thomson (8),123. Of these nine students
only Travers, later an eye-surgeon, became a nationally known figure.
40 C. Mackenzie, "Analysis of Compact Felspar from the Pentland Hills", 1'v1 emoirs of
the Wernerian Natural History Society, 1, 6r6-19, 181!.
41 Fullerton was a founder-member of the Wernerian Natural History Society (f. 1808).
Ogilby was an early member and contributor: Ogilby, "On the transition greenstone of
Fassney", Memoirs of the Wernerian Natural History Society, 1, 126-30, 1811; Ogilby, "On
the veins that occur in the newest Floetz-trap formation of East Lothian", ibid., 469-78.
A general survey is given by J. M. Sweet, "The Wernerian Natural History Society in
Edinburgh", in Frieberger Forschungshefte, Abraham GoUleb Werner, Leipzig, 1967, 205-18.
THE CHEMIST BREEDERS IS
though his career before 1818 had been scarred by occasional belligerence and
polemics, he was a textbook writer of European stature and a highly regarded
systematic editor.42 By 1825, however, Thomson's reputation was about to
totter. He had distilled the results of ten years work done by himself and
about five by his pupils into his Attempt to Establish the First Principles of
Chemistry by Experiment. Doubtless Thomson felt that this book was the
acme of a long career. Certainly his confidence in its value was high. As he
explained in its Preface, his book "contains the result of many thousand
experiments, conducted with as much care and precision as it was in my power
to employ. They have occupied the whole of my time (except what was
necessarily devoted to the duties of my situation) for the last five years. All
those experiments which I considered as fundamental, were repeated so often,
and varied in so many ways, that I repose the most perfect confidence in their
accuracy" .43 In private, too, his confidence was unbounded: he was entranced
by the accuracy and beauty of his results.44 Unfortunately for Thomson the
value of his work was seriously assailed on two fronts. In 1825 Thomson's
friend Rainy showed that his specific gravity measurements, of \vhich he was
proud, were inaccurate.45 Worse still two years later the reliability of his
gravimetric analyses was assailed in the severest terms by Berzelius, then the
"Grand Cham of chemistry".46 He drew attention to the unacceptable scanti-
ness of necessary detail in the book and concluded that many of Thomson's
fundamental experiments were made at the writing desk. In an unusually
dignified reply Thomson denied the charge that he had deliberately falsified
results, but his reputation as a competent analytical chemist was badly
tarnished.47 Though his atomic \veights were widely accepted in Britain and
in America for about ten years, European chemists were not so tolerant and
supported the implacable Berzelius. The whole episode shows that the
egregiously ambitious Thomson, then a mature chemist aged fifty-two, had
over-stretched his capacities. His first major publication as a professor had
led to an attack on both his competence and his character from Europe's
leading inorganic analytical chemist. Thomson was accustomed to dealing
42 J. B. Morrell, "Thomas Thomson: Professor of Chemistry and University Reformer",

The British Journal for the History of Science, 4, 245-65 (247), 1969.
43 Thomson (23), xiv.
44 Thomson to Dalton, 19 April 1825, in Roscoe and Harden (21), 178-9.
45 Brock (21), 250-3; Thomson (23), 50.
46 W. V. Farrar, "Nineteenth-century speculations on the complexity of the
chemical elements", The British Journal for the History of Science, 2, 297-323 (299-301),
1965. For the importance of Berzelius as an analytical chemist, see F. Szabadvary,
History of Analytical Chemistry, Oxford, 1966, 114-60.
47 Thomson, "Reply to Berzelius's attack" (23); Crum (8), 261-3, unambiguously
acknowledged the defects of Thomson's First Principles.
16 J. B. MORRELL
contumaciously with the envious sallies which Ure regularly launched against
him, but attacks from Berzelius were far more wounding.48 Subsequent work
on atomic weights by Turner and Penny in the late r820s and the r830s con-
firmed the unreliability of Thomson's results and did nothing to enhance his
reputation.49
To some extent Thomson did revive his standing when he published in r836
the analyses made by his students and himself on hundreds of minerals in-
cluding about fifty new species. On this occasion he took care to disable
prospective critics by confessing that it was impossible to distinguish by
experiment between the essential and the incidental constituents of minerals,
and by giving practical details of the analytical techniques he had used.50 Yet
in contrast with the First Principles this work seems to have aroused little
controversy or notice. The reasons for its apparent lack of effect are clear
enough. Thomson discovered no new elements. His proposed formulae were
sometimes not enlightening. 51 In any case by the mid r830s the field of
mineralogical analysis was well developed and for the time being did not lead
to new research pastures. In that sense Thomson merely added a coping-stone
to a building which had been almost completed by a galaxy of talented analysts:
his work was lost among that of Stromeyer, Berzelius, H. and G. Rose, Mitscher-
lich, C. G. Gmelin, Bonsdorf, Berthier, Richard Phillips and Turner.52 Between
1825 and 1835 Thomson was working not in a newly emerging field such as
organic chemistry but a well developed one, and accordingly the competition
he faced was severe. Indeed Thomson's two research programmes stand in
sharp contrast with Liebig's major one. In 1825 Liebig was perfecting the
48 The Brande-Ure axis attacked Thomson in "A Review of Dr. Thomson's System ot
Chemistry", The Journal of Science and the Arts, 4, 299-321, 1818; "Thomson's System of
Chemistry", Quarterly Journal of Science and the Arts, 11, 119-71, 1821; "Dr. Thomas
Thomson-and his 'Answer''', ibid., 13, 333-53,1822; "Review of Dr. Thomson on the Atomic
Theory", ibid., 20, 113-41, 1826. Thomson replied in "Answer to the review of the sixth
edition of my 'System of Chemistry' ... ", Annals of Philosophy, 3,241-73, 1822; and "Dr.
Thomson's Answer to Dr. Ure's Review", ibid., 11, 1-14, 1826. Ure sometimes anticipated
Berzelius' criticisms of Thomson's atomic weight determinations: in 1821, for instance, he
had accused Thomson of "incessant twisting, stretching, and curtailing, of experimental
results, to suit some fantastic atomic dress". See Ure's second attack on Thomson,
Quarterly Journal of Science and the Arts, 11, 171, 1821.
49 Partington (17), iv, 225-32.
50 Thomson (24), i, iii-iv, 355-553.
51 Thomson's proposed formula for pyrope was:
10AIS + 5 (~~Mg + ~3 Cal + i3

Chr) S +
3 (!f +-l mn) S2. See Thomson (24), i, 269.
The modern formula is MgsA12(Si04)3. In Thomson's, Al was alumina, S silica, Mg mag-
nesia, Cal lime, Chr chromium oxide, f iron protoxide, and mn manganese protoxide.
52 Thomson himself acknowledged the value of the work done by these analysts in
Thomson (24). ii, 251-3.
technique on which his programme was to be based, whereas Thomson's

slapdash practical techniques were about to confer on him a dubious reputation
which was singularly incommensurate with his ambitions for his school and
himself. Eleven years later Liebig's fame as a pioneer organic chemist was
almost at its height, whereas Thomson's labours in the well worked and highly
competitive field of mineralogical analysis only marginally elevated his reputa-

tion.
III
As university teachers both Liebig and Thomson had access to a regular

supply of students for their laboratories. In Liebig's case, however, it seems
likely that even before 1835 the majority of his laboratory students were not
properly matriculated university students who had attended a gymnasium and
had passed the leaving certificate which officially was indispensable for admission
to a university. Most of his students simply went straight into his laboratory
and orbit. Many of these were pharmacy students who no doubt appreciated
that Liebig was a licensing examiner for prospective Hessian apothecaries. A
minority of the students who worked in his laboratory before 1835 was re-
cruited from those who attended his lectures; they were the survivors of the
rigorous optional oral tests that Liebig gave.53 After 1835, however, Liebig's
fame was such that he admitted to his laboratory any student whose potential
or accomplishment intrigued him. Up to about 1835 his laboratory students
were mainly German and European, but from then on other foreigners in
increasing numbers began to make the long pilgrimage to the Giessen laboratory
and to render its membership agreeably cosmopolitan. Some of these regis-
tered as students, others did not. This means that accounts of Liebig's
students which are derived solely from official class lists are necessarily partial
and incomplete. 54 But certainly from the mid 1830S Liebig increasingly
attracted students of increasing competence in research. One basic source of
this magnetism was that students were put through a systematic course of
practical chemistry in which training was imperceptibly transformed into
research. Generally it appears that after an initial course of qualitative and
quantitative analysis using known compounds each student was required to
53 H. G. Good, "On the- early history of Liebig's laboratory", Journal of Chemical

Education, 13, 557-62 (562), 1936.
54 This reservation applies to A. Wankmiiller, HAusHindische Studierende der Pharmacie
und Chemie bei Liebig in Giessen", Tiibinger Apothekengeschichtliche Abhandlungen,
Heft 15, Deutscher Apotheker Verlag, Stuttgart, 1967; available also in Deutsche Apotheker-
Zeitung, 107, 463-6, 1967. I am grateful to Dr. W. H. Brock for drawing my attention
to this paper; and for stressing that Wankmiiller's list is based on the university's printed
sessional lists of students, and not on the sometimes conflicting manuscript class lists.
18 J. B. MORRELL
produce pure substances in good yield from raw materials. This was a part of
Liebig's training on which he laid great stress. Once this preliminary training
had been satisfactorily completed, the student was allowed to pursue original
research and compelled to work on his own under Liebig's general supervision. 55
The rarity of such systematic practical training more than compensated for the
inadequate physical conditions which obtained until 1835. After 1839, too,
this training became available at the absurdly cheap rate of 78 florins (£6 14s. od.)
for a course which ran for six full days per week for eight to nine months.56 No
wonder that from 1839 students flocked to Giessen in greater numbers: the
combination of the most rigorous practical training and the incredibly.low
cost (in comparison with Paris, London and Edinburgh) was irresistible.
Moreover, successful students of Liebig's laboratory by their association with
him furthered their own career prospects. The majority of his better students
became teachers, and he often obtained posts for these proteges who modelled
their work with apostolic fervour on his. For instance, in 1845 Liebig not only
suggested Will, Fresenius and Hofmann, all of whom had been his laboratory
assistants, for the chair of chemistry at the newly founded College of Chemistry
in London, but he even accepted the conditions of appointment on Hofmann's
behalf. 57 It is hardly surprising that Hoffmann ran' his school at the College
very much on Giessen lines. Those students of Liebig's who wanted a quali-
fication to give them better career prospects could gain a Ph.D. at Giessen on
the basis of one to three years' work depending on the speed of their research
and the extent of their previous accomplishment. Honorary Ph.D.s were also
Liebig (14), 37-8.
55
W. Gregory, Letter to the Right Honourable George Earl of Aberdeen on the state of the
56
schools of chemistry in the United Kingdom, London, 1842, 22, where 78 florins were stated
to equal £6 14s. ode (i.e. £6.70). Gregory seems a reliable source: his figure of 1500 florins
for the annual laboratory expenses of 1841 agrees with that given subsequently and inde-
pendently by Volhard (7), i, 81; and he consistently assumed that 11.6 florins = £1. The
standard I use throughout this paper for conversions is £1 sterling in the early 1840S.
Liebig was not alone in Germany during the 1840S in offering very cheap courses of training
in practical chemistry: at the nearby University of Marburg, tuition in practical chemistry
under Bunsen and lodgings could be enjoyed for as little as £6 5s. ode per semester. It
should be noted that in 1845 tuition alone, exclusive of chemicals and apparatus, at the
Royal College of Chemistry in London cost £25. The financial attractiveness of some of
the best German practical chemical courses is stressed by W. H. Brock, "Prologue to
Heurism", in History of Education Society, The Changing Curriculum, London, 1970,
71-85 (76).
57 J. Bentley, "The Chemical Department of the Royal School of Mines. Its origins and
development under A. W. Hofmann," Ambix, 17, 153-81 (;1:63),1970. Roscoe (13), 27, saw
clearly that Liebig's great and personal achievement was to create a proper teaching
laboratory from which "the flame of original research was carried throughout all lands by
ardent disciples who more or less successfully continued, both as regards tuition and
investigation, their master's work".
available to those who had already acquired scientific distinction. Clearly a

Ph.D. was necessary for those who hoped to become German university teachers,
but for others it could be irrelevant to their purposes. The important point,
however, is that the few who for any reason needed a doctoral qualification
could gain it by working in Liebig's laboratory. All these characteristics drew
students to work in the Giessen laboratory. British students, in particular,

began their trek to Giessen in the mid I830's. The attractiveness of the
laboratory there may be judged from the following list of subsequently well-
known British students who worked in it:
Thomas Anderson Robert John Kane
Albert James Bernays Augustus Matthiessen
John Blyth William Allen Miller
Benjamin Collins Brodie, Jr. James Sheridan Muspratt
John Lloyd Bullock Henry Minchin Noad
Walter Crum Lyon PIa yfair
George F ownes Thomas Richardson
William Francis Edmund Ronalds
Edward Frankland Henry Edward Schunk
John Gardner Robert Angus Smith
John Henry Gilbert John Stenhouse
John Henry Gladstone Robert Dundas Thomson
William Gregory Thomas Thomson, Jr.
William Charles Henry Thomas George Tilley
Henry Bence Jones Alexander William Williamson58
One point in connection with this impressive list needs to be stressed. Many
of these British pupils of Liebig eventually held teaching posts. If we confine
our attention to those who occupied university chairs or posts it is clear that by
the r850s the Liebig clan had assumed most of the "plums" available in
British university chemistry:
Anderson, professor, University of Glasgow, r852-74
Blyth, professor, Queen's College, Cork, 1849-72
Brodie, professor, University of Oxford, 1855-73
Frankland, professor, Owens College, Manchester, 1851-57
Gregory, professor, University of Edinburgh, r844-58
Kane, president, Queen's College, Cork, r845-73
Miller, professor, King's College, London, r845-70
Playfair, professor, University of Edinburgh, 1858-69
Richardson, lecturer, University of Durham, 1856-67
Ronalds, professor, Queen's College, Galway, 1849-56
Williamson, professor, University College, London, 1849-87
Thomson was in one respect more favourably placed than Liebig. The size
of his lecture class was larger than Liebig's. From it Thomson could draw
58 Volhard (7) 85, 141; Wankmiiller (54), 11-16; and D.N.B. I am grateful to Mr. K.
Boughey for drawing Tilley to my attention.
20 J. B. MORRELL
medical students in order to convert them to chemists. As chemistry was an

obligatory part of the pre-clinical medical course at Glasgow, this meant that as
long as the medical school sustained its reputation there would be a regular
supply of students on which Thomson could dra\v. However it was also possible
for any keen student to attend Thomson's lecture and laboratory classes even if
he were not a regular medical student; and the majority of his pupils who sub-
sequently attained chemical eminence seem to have worked in his laboratory as

private students. Thomson's laboratory class was necessarily run on a small
scale until 1831 when the new larger laboratory in Shuttle Street was opened: he
was compelled to restrict the size of his laboratory class to ten students who had
access to the laboratory three to four hours a day except Sunday for ten months
of the year.59 Their chief concern at first was patently the analysis of minerals,
as Thomson's pugnacious 1827 account of his experimental class shows: "The
object of the class is to teach all those who wish to become practical chemists.
I have a set of rules, which are in manuscript, in the laboratory; they make
themselves quite masters of these rules, and I give them different minerals to
analyse; they continue in the laboratory, such of them as are interested in the
thing, till they become expert chemists, and there are five or six that have gone
out of my laboratory that I think are as good chemists as any men in existence" .60
During this sort of training Thomson kept tight reins on his students, at least
in the 1820S: he always prescribed work for his students to do. In the early
1820S he had apparently allowed some students to attempt independent
research, but as they were not sufficiently au fait with the various branches of
chemistry their progress in his opinion was irritatingly slow or non-existent. 61
Unlike Liebig, Thomson had not devised an easy transition for his laboratory
students from learning to research. By the late thirties, the emphasis was still
on mineralogical analysis, though under a less authoritarian regime. For
instance, in session 1838-39 there were in Thomson's laboratory class only four
students, including John Henry Gilbert. In later life he recalled that "after a
little instruction in the use of the balance, I was at once set to analyse the
minerals, Prehnite and Stilbite, and was referred to books for method. The
Professor was, however, always ready to give kind attention and assistance to
the student when required."62
There are unfortunately no surviving lists of Thomson's laboratory pupils,
yet a few generalizations can be made on the basis of secondary or indirect
59 Evidence, Oral and Documentary, taken before the Commissioners for visiting the Uni-
versities of Scotland. The University of Glasgow. Parliamentary Papers, 36, (1837), 151 and
203. In future references this work will be called Glasgow Evidence.
60 Glasgow Evidence, 203. This was taken in 1827 and published ten years later.
61 Ibid., 203.
62 J. H. Gilbert, upresidential Address", Journal of the Chemical Society, 43, 224-63
(238), 1883.
THE CHEMIST BREEDERS 2r
evidence. It seems that Thomson's catchment area for both his lecture and
laboratory classes was primarily the Glasgow region. An analysis of the
published and unpublished lists of pupils who won prizes in Thomson's lecture
class between r823 and r84r shows that almost half of them came from the
Glasgow area, about a quarter from Scotland, about a sixth from England, and
the rest in equal number from Jamaica, Canada, Siberia, Ireland and the Isle of
Man.63 It is important to realize that of these prizewinners only Robert
Dundas Thomson, Thomas Richardson and James Finlay Weir Johnston sub-
sequently became well-known chemists. It also seems that the laboratory fee
for tuition of three to four hours a day for six days a week for ten months was
about £r per month, a charge which was of course totally under Thomson's
control and discretion. Compared with equivalent laboratory courses else-
where in Britain in the r820s and r830s Thomson's was cheap: it cost far less,
for instance, than the courses available in Edinburgh which generally cost
£3 3s. ode for tuition one hour a day for five days a week for three months.64
Those who took advantage of the laboratory training he offered became academic
and industrial chemists: a list of his less obscure pupils who became, or at some
time intended, to be chemists is set out below. Most of these, but not all, were
pupils in his laboratory.65
Academics Industrial Chemists
Thomas Andrews William Blythe
Thomas Clark Hugh Colquhoun
Thomas Graham Walter Crum
James Finlay Weir Johnston Joseph Henry Gilbert
Charles Lehunt Andrew Halliday
Thomas Richardson Alexander Harvey
Andrew Steel John Tennant
John Stenhouse John Tennent
Robert Dundas Thomson
Thomas Thomson, junior
Though the above classification is arbitrary, Crum being a case in point, it does
seem that in Thomson's opening years at Glasgow industrial chemists, both
actual and prospective, found his lectures and laboratory attractive. For
instance in session r8r8-r9, Thomson's first as professor, his friend Charles
Macintosh, the Glasgow chemical manufacturer, became a student once more
63 For 1823-33 see W. Innes Addison, Prize Lists of the University of Glasgow, I778-
I8]], Glasgow, 1902; for 1835 to 1841 I am indebted to information kindly given to me by
Miss E. Jack, Reference Librarian, University of Glasgow.
64 Morrell (5), 79.
65 R. D. Thomson, "Memoir of the late Dr. Thomas Thomson", Edinburgh New Philo-
sophical Journal, 54, 86-98 (95-6), 1852-3. Details about most of Thomson's pupils may
be found in Partington (17), iv and D.N.B.
22 J. B. MORRELL
and regularly attended Thomson's lectures.65 In the laboratory that session

were to be found: one of the Dunlops of the Clyde Iron Works and St. Rollox;
Angus, a sugar refiner from Greenock; John Tennant of the famous St. Rollox
Chemical Works, Glasgow, who became a partner in 1820 and shortly after-
wards Managing Director; Walter Crum, subsequently head of the well-known
calico-printing firm at Thornliebank near Glasgow and close friend of Graham
and Liebig; and Alexander Harvey.67 The last-named may well illustrate the
complaint Thomson made in 1826 to Dalton that his promising pupils had
usually been absorbed "in the vortex of manufacture and business, which is
here all powerful".68 After four years as Thomson's laboratory assistant-cum-
pupil, probably behveen 1818 and 1822, Harvey became chemical manager
first of the St. Rollox works and then of Henry Menteith's turkey-red dyeing and
calico-printing factory. From 1838 to his death he ran his own firm of dyers.
In late life he attributed his success to his early training under Thomson: "my
early knowledge of chemistry has had a tendency to carry me through all those
different branches (of my career)".69 A later pupil, John Tennent enjoyed an
equally distinguished industrial and commercial career. After working for
three years between 1834 and 1837 in Thomson's laboratory as a student, his
fortunes steadily prospered: between 1837 and 1839, he was working for
Charles Mackintosh on the artificial production of ultramarine; between 1839
and 1845, he was manager of Mackintosh's alum works at Campsie near Glasgow;
from 1845 to 1847 he managed White's chrome works at Shawfield; from 1847
to 1853 he managed the chemical works at Bonnington near Edinburgh which
used as raw materials the gas tar and ammoniacal liquor produced by the
Edinburgh and the Edinburgh and Leith gas works; finally from 1853 until his
death, he was a member of the Tennant firm, chemical manager of the St.
Rollox works, and the planner and erector in 1863 of the chemical works at
Hebburn-on-Tyne. Though Tennent published no papers his obituarist rightly
pointed out that he was very successful in "the application of chemical and
physical science to the manufacture of the most largely used chemical products,
in the purest mercantile form, and upon the largest practicable scale ... ".70
66 G. Macintosh, Biographical Memoir of the late Charles Macintosh, Glasgow, 1857, III.
67 F. H. Thomson, "Presidential Address for 1867", Proceedings of the Philosophical
Society of Glasgow, 6, 233-6, 1865-8.
68 Thomson to Dalton, 8 December 1826, in Roscoe and Harden (21), 183-4. A year
later it was noted that "his labours were incessant, both in instructing the ordinary Uni-
versity students, and also in training young chemists practically for the manufactures".
See R. Christison, The Life of Sir Robert Christison, Bart., ed. by his sons, Edinburgh and
London, 1885, i, 366.
69 Royal Commission on Scientific Instruction and the Advancement of Science: Parlia-
mentary Papers, 22, (1874), 158.
70 Obituary in Journal of the Chemical Society, 21, xxix-xxxi, 1868.
Another pupil of Thomson's, his grand nephew Hugh Colquhoun, was engaged
in 1825 by Charles Mackintosh "to superintend, during his temporary absence,
a series of experiments intended to ascertain the best details of practice and
apparatus for his most ingenious process of the conversion of iron to steel". 71
If pupils such as Crum, Tennant, Harvey, Tennent and Colquhoun are represen-
tative, it seems likely that many chemical works in the Glasgow area could
draw on men who had learned basic practical skills in Thomson's laboratory.
That is why Liebig, in his criticism of the state of chemistry teaching in Austria,
pointedly ascribed the unique growth of the chemical industry in Glasgow to
the training given there by Thomson and Graham: "Ich habe die Umgegend
von Glasgow mit chemischen Fabriken jeder Art bedeckt gesehen, es ist das
Centrum, es ist eins der wichtigsten Rader in der ungeheuren Maschine der
englischen Industrie. Thomson, den ihr so gering achtet, Graham ist daran
Schuld; tiberall sonst in diesem so gerlihmten Lande findet ihr nichts der Art,
wie in Glasgow". 72
Thomson's academic pupils rarely received all their practical training under
his aegis. For instance, before moving to work under Thomson, Stenhouse
was a pupil in the laboratory at Anderson's University, Glasgow, which was run
by Thomas Graham while he was professor of chemistry there between 1830
and 1837.73 More importantly, a number of Thomson's pupils began their
training with him and then completed it elsewhere: Andrews left Thomson to
study under Dumas; and Johnston went to work in Berzelius' laboratory.74
71 H. Colquhoun, "A New Form of Carbon", Annals of Philosophy, 12, 1-13 (2), 1826.
72 Liebig, "Der Zustand der Chemie in Oestreich", Annalen der Pharmacie, 25, 339-47
(346), 1838. On the Glasgow chemical industry see A. and N. Clow, The Chemical Revo-
lution, London, 1952. On the Tennant chemical works at St. Rollox, see E. W. D. Tennant,
"The Early History of ,the St. Rollox Chemical Works", Chemistry and Industry, 66, 666-73,
1947. A few of Thomson's students were active in the chemical industry in Lancashire.
For instance Thomson's nephew William Blythe (1813-1879), an original member of the
Chemical Society, eventually founded his own chemical works at Church, near Accrington,
in 1845. Like so many of Thomson's students, he specialized in the dyeing and printing of
fabrics, alkalis and sulphuric acid. See: R. S. Crossley, Accrington Captains of Industry,
Accrington, 1930, 202-203 to which the Borough Librarian, Accrington, kindly drew my
attention. Halliday operated a works devoted to mordants, gums and starches in Salford
during the 1840s. For this information I am grateful to the Reference Librarian of Man-
chester Public Libraries.
73 R. A. Smith, The Life and Works of Thomas Graham, 1884,66, lists Stenhouse, Lyon
Playfair, Gilbert, J. J. Griffin, Crum and Harvey inter alia as laboratory pupils of Graham
between 1830 and 1837 at Anderson's University. Smith is unreliable, and I suspect that
at least Gilbert, Crum and Harvey were never pupils of Graham.
74 Having gone to the University of Glasgow in 1828-1829 in order "to study chemistry
profoundly", Andrews worked in Dumas' laboratory in late 1830. See Andrews (6), x-xi.
Having worked in Thomson's laboratory in 1826, Johnston was so impressed by Berzelius'
laboratory when he visited it in 1829 that three years later he worked there. See Partington
(17), iv, 148.
J. B. MORRELL
The majority of migrant pupils, however, went to Liebig partly for the better
training and partly for a research qualification in physical science which was
not then available at Glasgow: at least Gilbert, Richardson, Stenhouse, R. D.
Thomson, T. Thomson junior, and Crum all made the pilgrimage to Giessen.75
As Thomson's son, his nephew, and Richardson were among the first British
students who worked in Liebig's laboratory to which they were sent by Thomson,
it seems that Thomson was aware of the incompleteness of the training he gave
in his laboratory. As the case of Richardson shows, these pupils learnt in-
organic mineral analysis under him, after which they migrated to Giessen for
organic techniques. 76 Nor was Thomson bitter about Liebig's success.77
Indeed the Thomsons were on good terms with Liebig by 1837 when he paid his
first visit to Britain: Thomson- junior, regarded by Liebig as one of his most
promising pupils, met Liebig at Hull in his capacity as "Reisebegleiter"; and
Thomson himself acted as Glasgow's senior host to him.78 It seems, then, that
by the mid 1830S Thomson was prepared and even keen to relinquish his better
laboratory pupils to more eminent chemists such as Liebig, as the following
letter of 1838 from Thomson to Liebig conclusively shows:
This letter will be given you by Mr. William McFarlane, the son of a
calico-printer in this neighbourhood [Glasgow], who has been for two
75 Thomson, junior, (1817-1878), worked in Liebig's laboratory in 1837. His father

wanted his elder son to follow him by being a chemist. As J. D. Hooker pointed out in his
obituary of Thomson, junior, Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, 22, 309-15 (309-
10), 1878, Hfor many years [before 1837J he worked a little daily at the University labora-
tory, finally spending a winter at Giessen under Liebig, who regarded him as one of his most
promising pupils, and under whom he discovered pectic acid in carrots". Thomson's aims
were ironically thwarted because in the late 1830S his son returned to botany, his first love,
as a result of the encouragement given to him by Sir William Jackson Hooker, professor
of botany at the University of Glasgow (1820-1841) and his son J. D. Hooker. Thereafter
Thomson primed his nephew R. D. Thomson as his successor.
76 During 1834-5 at least, Richardson who was a close friend of Thomson's son was hard
at work in Thomson's laboratory analysing minerals. In 1836-7 he was a pupil of Liebig
under whom he published on organic chemistry and graduated Ph.D. Then he went to
Paris with Thomson, and completed his chemical apprenticeship under Liebig's close
friend and collaborator, Pelouze, with whom he published jointly again on organic chemistry.
See: Richardson,HZusammensetzung des Cyanmethylen-Aethers", Annalen der Pharmacie,
23, 138-40, 1837; Richardson and J. Pelouze, HDecomposition du cyanogene dans l'eau",
Comptes Rendus, 6, 187-9, 1838; D.N.B., which seems the fullest source.
77 Testimonials in favour of William Gregory ... as a Candidate for the vacant chair of
chemistry in the University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, 1843, 18, in which Thomson asserted
that Gregory Hhas had an excellent chemical education,' having been a practical pupil for
some time in Professor Liebig's laboratory at Giessen". Gregory had studied in Liebig's
laboratory in autumn 1836 and summer 1841 specifically to learn the new methods· of
organic analysis (Gregory, Testimonials, 4. 5).
78 Volhard (7), i, 133, 139-41.
years a practical student of chemistry in my laboratory and has acquired

a good deal of skill in the mode of analysing minerals, metals, etc. He
is a young man of good abilities, excellent principles and great industry
and goes to Giessen in order to get some knowledge of the mode of pre-
paring and analysing vegetable bodies. He dined with us one day while
you \vere in Glasgow; but perhaps you did not pay much attention to
him.
My son writes you by l\fr. McFarlane. He intended to have.spent the
ensuing Summer at Giessen.79
Consequently, Thomson's pupils did not regard themselves as his disciples and
apostles; and very few of them were "placed" in important academic positions
by him. Though he tried desperately in 1846 to convince the Lord Advocate
of Scotland that his favourite pupil and nephew, R. D. Thomson, should
succeed him, he failed even to pass on his chair to one of his own pupils. 80
Ironically his successor, Thomas Anderson, was a Liebig pupil. Equally
significantly both R. D. Thomson and Colquhoun, proteges and relatives of
Thomson, eventually failed to find posts in academic chemistry: the former
became a medical officer of health in 1856; and in the late 1820S Colquhoun
seems to have entered commerce, a traditional occupation in his family.81 One
of his few successes, however, occurred in 1833 when he acted as the well-paid
chairman of an advisory committee which recommended to the Senate of
Marischal College, Aberdeen, that Clark be appointed professor of chemistry.82
There would seem little doubt that generally Thomson did not offer to his
students the rigorous training and career opportunities that were to be enjoyed
under Liebig. Yet ambitious young chemists did at least gain direction and
encouragement from him in the early stages of their careers. Graham is a
case in point. Having studied under Thomson in 1825-26 Graham published
his first three articles in Annals of Philosophy a journal over which Thomson
still wielded influence.83 When he moved in 1826 to Edinburgh to further his
career Thomson's sealed letters of introduction to Edward Turner (then a
79 Thomson to Liebig, 18 April 1838, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Miinchen, Liebigiana
Bh.
so Thomson's letters of 27 July and 6 August 1846 to Andrew Rutherfurd, the Lord
Advocate for Scotland; and Rutherfurd's reply of 3 August 1846 in which he refused to
allow Thomson to resign in favour of R. D. Thomson. This correspondence is in the
Scottish Record Office.
SI Colquhoun graduated M.D. 1826, never practised medicine, and seems to have retired
from scientific activity in the late 1820S. See W. Innes Addison, The Matriculation
Albums of the University of Glasgow from I728 to I958, Glasgow, 1913, 293.
·S2 A. Findlay, The Teaching of Chemistry in the Universities of Aberdeen, Aberdeen,
1935, 23-5·
S3 Graham, "Ort the absorption of gases by liquids", Annals of Philosophy, 12, 69-74,
1826; Graham, "On the heat of friction", ibid., 260-2; Graham, "Alcohol derived from the
fermentation of bread", ibid., 369.
J. B. MORRELL
private teacher of chemistry and chemical editor of Brewsters' Edinburgh

Journal of Science) and John Leslie (professor of natural philosophy in the
University of Edinburgh) enabled Graham to establish himself more easily and
effectively in Edinburgh's scientific life.84 They also helped him to begin his
teaching career when he took over Turner's classes from February to July r828.85
Again Crum and Colquhoun first established themselves via the Annals of Philo-
sophy; and a few years later Andrews' opening three papers dealt quite explicitly
with Thomsonian topics.86 In general, therefore, Thomson's laboratory was
not a finishing school for prospective academic chemists: it was a nursery.
IV
One of the most important elements in the success of a research school
could be the availability of simple, quick and reliable experimental techniques
'which brilliant and average students could apply in a new or growing field of
enquiry. There is no doubt that Liebig's apparatus for combustion analysis of
organic compounds fulfilled these desiderata though it had to be supplemented
by Dumas' method for determining nitrogen. As Hofmann pointed out, this
apparatus "is certainly that which has conduced, more than any other of his
great discoveries, to facilitate the productive labours of the chemical commun-
ity, and has been the main source of that marvellous development of chemistry,
especially organic, which will be looked back to hereafter as one of the chief
glories of our age ... ".87 It must be stressed that before Liebig perfected his
"combustion apparatus" the difficulties facing organic analysts were so formid-
able that only a few of the best men, such as Gay-Lussac, Thenard, Prout and
Berzelius, had overcome them and produced accurate results before r830. For
instance Berzelius determined the carbon in a compound by oxidising it with
potassium chlorate to carbon dioxide which he estimated gravimetrically and
not volumetrically: he measured the increase in weight of a small bulb contain-
ing caustic potash and covered with thin leather, which he introduced into a
bell-jar containing the carbon dioxide which he had collected over mercury.
This difficult operation required a high degree of experienced manipulative skill.
Liebig, however, determined the carbon dioxide by weighing it after he had
absorbed it in his well-known five bulbs containing potassium hydroxide
solution. These bulbs ensured that the carbon dioxide was totally absorbed;
84 Graham (73), IS, 29.
85 Ibid., 31-2•
86 Crum, "Experiments and observations on indigo", Annals of Philosophy, 5, 81-100,
1823; Andrews, "On the action of a flame urged by the blowpipe on other flames", PhilosoPhi-
cal Magazine, 6, 366-7,1829; Andrews, "On the detection of baryta or strontia when in union
with lime", ibid., 7, 404-6, 1830; Andrews, "Chemical researches on the blood of cholera
patients, ibid., 1, 295-305, 1832; Colquhoun (71).
87 Hofmann (IS), 45.
and the two upper ones acted as safety vessels by preventing any potash solution
being lost irrespective of the direction in which gases were being passed into it.sS
This combination of extra-ordinary simplicity and effectiveness characterized
many of Liebig's experimental methods or apparatus such as his method of
analysing air using an alkaline solution of pyrogallol and "his" condenser. It
is not surprising that Liebig was proud of the speed and effectiveness with
which about 400 analyses per year were made in his laboratory using his
combustion apparatus. Indeed, as he pointed out to Wohler, his method was
not only more reliable than Berzelius' but also twenty times faster: "Er hat 18
Monate mit seinen Analysen der organischen Sauren zugebracht; es sind im
ganzen 7, mit den Wiederholungen wollen wir sagen 21. Ich bitte Dich,
lieber Freund, in unseren letzten Arbeiten sind im ganzen in drei Monaten 72
Analysen gemacht worden, von denen keine einzige miBlang, daran hatte
Berzelius mit seinem alten Apparate flinf Jahre gearbeitet."89 With practice
any determined student could obtain reliable results .with Liebig's combustion
apparatus. When his students began to apply it and related techniques to
the newly emerging field of organic chemistry the result was an explosion of
knowledge. By 1846 as many as fifteen students in his laboratory published
in just one year no less than thirty-two research papers in Liebig's own Annalen
der Chemie und Pharmacie.90 Clearly Liebig's combustion apparatus and its
relatives permitted the production of knowledge to take place in a regular
routine way; and, it should be stressed, students who were not innately bril-
liant were enabled by this apparatus to do competent research. The accession
of relatively large numbers of students to his laboratory had compelled Liebig
to codify and systematize not only the research techniques which he and his
students employed but also the preliminary training which he gave to them.
By 1837 he had published a guide to organic analysis; and in the following
decade, his pupils Will and Fresenius published books on the methods of quali-
tative and quantitative analysis that were used in the Giessen laboratory.91
88 Partington (17), iv, 234-8; J. L. W. Thudichum, "On the discoveries and philosophy
of Liebig: Lecture II", Journal of the Society of Arts, 24, 95-100 (98), 1876.
89 Liebig to Wohler, 2 March 1838, in Volhard (7), ii, 225.
90 Volhard (7), i, 174-5.
91 Liebig, Anleitung zur Analyse organischer Korper, Brunswick, 1837, translated by
W. Gregory, Instructions for the Chemical Analysis of Organic Bodies, Glasgow, 1839;
H. Will, Anleitung zur qualitativen chemise hen Analyse, Heidelberg, 1846; H. Will, Outlines
of the course of Qualitative Analysis followed in the Giessen Laboratory, London, 1846; C. R.
Fresenius, Anleitung zur qualitativen chemischen Analyse, Bonn, 1841, translated by J. L.
Bullock, Elementary Instruction in Qualitative Analysis, London, 1841; Fresenius, Anleitung
zur quantitativen chemischen Analyse, Brunswick, 1846, translated by Bullock, Instruction
in Chemical Analysis (Quantitative), London, 1846. It is important to note the rapidity
with which these works were translated into English.
J. B. MORRELL
In short, Liebig scored a double success: he invented simple, fast and reliable
experimental techniques, and these were applied in the emerging field of organic
chemistry. Thus his students, both brilliant and mediocre, were enabled to
produce reliable chemical knowledge in a systematic way on a large scale. In
this sense, the era of Big Science began at Giessen in the early 184os.
In this particular respect Thomson's work forms a painful contrast. There
is no evidence that he devised simple, fast and reliable techniques which a large
group of laboratory students applied to a new field. It is true that by r825 he
developed methods of analysing inorganic salts and of determining the specific
gravity of gases, but as I have previously stressed the reliability of these
methods was severely attacked in public. It may be true, for instance, that
Thomson invented the alkalimetrical or centesimal mode of analysis: his
method was to determine the reacting quantities of two soluble salts, say solu-
tions of zinc sulphate and barium chloride, by varying the amount of one
reactant until the supernatant liquid produced gave no reaction with each
reactant.92 Unfortunately, he ignored the problem of absorption by the pre-
cipitate and in some cases wildly misjudged its composition. Again Thomson
was quick to see the importance of determining accurately the specific gravity
of gases; yet between r822 and r826 he put himself into a totally contradictory
position on the question of whether the presence of water vapour in hydrogen
significantly affected the determinations of its specific gravity to which he had
given so much time and effort.93 Additionally, Thomson attempted to use
these unreliable methods in the field of inorganic chemistry in which the fruits
were not ready for picking as they were in organic chemistry. Despite his
laudable ambitions Thomson never produced a conspicuously successful experi-
mental technique in his research field. This meant that ,after r825, when
Thomson turned from the analysis of salts and gases to the analysis of minerals,
his students lacked a set of routine dependable techniques with which they
could occupy and colonise an area of research. From the little we know about
what his students worked on in his laboratory one suspects that initially his
students worked chiefly on mineral analysis. Though Thomson took odd
pupils such as Johnston, who in late r826 was working on potassium chloro-
ferro cyanide, it seems that between r825 and r835 the better students were
encouraged to do research in the field of mineralogical analysis; certainly the
research work of some thirteen pupils was sufficiently important to be published
by Thomson himself.94 Such students could consult Thomson's manuscript
92 R. D. Thomson (8),142-3.
93 Brock (21), 252.
94 Graham (73), 27. In Thomson's Outlines (24) the mineral analyses done in his
laboratory by the following students are cited on the following pages: Birkmire, William:
365; Blythe, (William?): 331, 572; Bruce, (James Hamilton?): 2g8; Colquhoun, Hugh:
rules of analysis which were available in his laboratory.95 Indeed by May 1828
Thomson told the pubEsher Blackwood that he had "made considerable
progress in a practical system of chemistry" which he intended as a supplement
to the seventh edition of his textbook A System of Chemistry.96 A year later he
had dropped the project of writing a separate book on practical chemistry and
analysis. 97 It is significant that the nearest he came to producing such a work

was the third part of his Outlines of Mineralogy, Geology and Mineral Analysis
which was added to enable readers to judge the accuracy of the analyses which
the first part contained.98 Thomson also pronounced with characteristic if
optimistic elan that it was also a teaching manual for "young British chemists,
\vho were desirous of perfecting themselves in this important branch of practical
chemistry".99 This treatise on analysing minerals shows that Thomson's
research students between 1825 and 1835 had nothing like Liebig's combustion
analysis method which they could systematically and easily deploy. On the
contrary students had to learn a multiplicity of difficult techniques; and only
patient, skilfull and pernickety ones were likely to produce reliable results. In
any event Thomson's treatise on mineral analysis had been anticipated by
H. Rose's Handbuch of which an English translation was quickly published in
1831.100 Perhaps it is significant that the first separately published account
of the apparatus and methods used in Thomson's laboratory was given by his
nephew and was aimed chiefly at British schools.10! Compared with works by
H. Rose, Will, Fresensius and Liebig himself, this treatise on practical chemistry
was elementary in level, less comprehensive in scope, and less systematic in its
treatment. The plain fact is that Thomson, whose fluent mastery of syste-
matic and clear writing ensured the unrivalled popularity of his textbook in
Britain for about thirty years, was nothing like as successful as a manipulative
465; Coverdale, (John?) Dr.: 232, 377; Fairie: 362; Lehunt, Charles: 236, 266, 275, 302,
331,334,335,480; Muir, Thomas: 202, 212, 383, 401, 424, 425, 493 ; Muir, William: 510;
Richardson, Thomas: 140, 244, 262, 309, 354, 365, 410, 477,487, 506,614, 615, 678; Short,
(John Quircke?): 245; Steel, Andrew: 410; Thomson, R. D.: 244, 339, 379, 436, 473, 573.
It is clear that the dominant students in Thomson's second research programme were
Richardson, T. Muir, Lehunt and R. D. Thomson.
95 Glasgow Evidence, 203. No copy of these manuscript rules appears to have survived.
96 Thomson to Blackwood, 29 May 1828, National Library of Scotland, MS 4023, f. 147.
97 Thomson to Blackwood, 3 December 1829, National Library of Scotland, MS 4026,
f. 183.
98 Thomson (24), i, v.
99 Ibid., i, v. Thomson, of course, was totally convinced that chemistry had made
remarkable progress from about 1780 owing to the improvements made in analytical
methods, ibid., ii, 353-4.
100 H. Rose, Handbuch der analytischen Chemie, Berlin, 1829; translated by J. J. Griffin,
A Manual of Analytical Chemistry, London, 1831.
101 R. D. Thomson, School Chemistry, London, 1848.
30 J. B. MORRELL
chemist. His inability to devise for himself and for his students simple speedy
and reliable techniques, first in the field of analysis of salts and gases and then
in that of mineral analysis, led to the virtual disintegration of his research
school after 1836.
v
The que3tion of publication opportunities is a relatively simple one. During

the late 1820S Liebig published his important papers in the Annales de Chimie et
de Physique, which was conveniently edited by his mentor and friend Gay-
Lussac, and in Poggendorf's Annalen der Physik und Chemie.I02 In 1832,
however, Liebig gained control of totally unimpeded publication by taking over
as dominant editor P. L. Geiger's M agazin fur Pharmacie. Under its new
titles Annalen der Pharmacie (1832-39) and Annalen der Chemie und Pharmacie
(1840-73) Liebig published research papers, often concerning organic chemistry,
by himself, his pupils and his friends. From his advantageous position as
editor, Liebig also surveyed chemistry with an eagle eye and in his editorial
criticisms pounced on deviators.lo3 In these ways, the Annalen rapidly became
the journal of the Giessen research school of chemistry. Liebig's students
knew this and were encouraged by him to publish under their own names even
\vhen he had helped them.lo4 He realized acutely that his young students
were greatly encouraged by seeing their names in print; and he was sufficiently
worldly to realize that a good paper published by one of his students increased
his own reputation. For reasons which I have previously discussed the
Giessen laboratory produced a large amount of research work which after 1832
appeared predictably in the Annalen. It is not surprising that in the 1840S it
had outstripped its rivals such as Erdmann's Journal fur praktische Chemie to
become the leading chemical journal of Europe. Liebig's pupils could enjoy
therefore a flying start with regard to publication. What better opening to
his career could Stenhouse have made than to publish his first five papers in
Liebig's Annalen?I05
Thomson's case is paradoxical. Before he assumed in 1817 his post at the
University of Glasgow, from 1813 he had edited in London his own Annals of
102See Royal Society Catalogue of Scientific Papers, and Paolini (7).

103Partington, (17), iv, 299; and J. P. Phillips, "Liebig and Kolbe, Critical Editors",
Chymia, 11, 89-97, 1966.
104 Good (53), 56r.
105 Stenhouse, "Darstellung und Analyse des Hippursaure-Aethers", Annalen der

Pharmacie, 31, 148-51, 1839; Stenhouse, "Ueber eine neue Chlorcyan-Verbindung",
Annalen der Chemie und Pharmacie, 33, 92-7, 1840; Stenhouse, "Ueber das sogenannte
Kiinstliche AmeisenOl", ibid., 35, 301-4, 1840; Stenhouse, "Zusammensetzung des Elemi-
und Oli-banum6Is", ibid., 304-6; Stenhouse, "Untersuchung des Palm6ls und der Cacao-
butter", ibid., 36, 50-g, 1840.
Philosophy, a journal strongly slanted to chemistry. Between I8r8 and r820

inclusive he superintended the journal at a distance and then took it over
again.106 However, with uncharacteristic concern for his own future, he
resigned entirely in late r820 as editor because of his distance from London
"which quadrupled, as he said, the labour of the editor, and diminished almost
in the same proportion, its successful exertion".l°7 Until late r826 Thomson
met no difficulties in placing his papers: between 1821 and 1826 inclusive
Thomson published r8 papers exclusively in the Annals of PhilosoPhy edited by
his friend Richard Phillips who had succeeded him as editor. lOB Unfortunately
for Thomson Annals ceased publication in r826. For the next eight years
Thomson lacked a regular journal in which he could publish his papers, and
indeed had to use journals such as Philosophical Transactions and Transactions
of the Royal Society of Edinburgh whose columns he had conspicuously shunned
in previous years. Between r827 and r835 his 19 original research papers were
published in nine different journals.lo9 No wonder then that in r835 and r836
he eagerly assisted his nephew R. D. Thomson in editing the Records of General
Science in which he published exclusively twenty-three papers during those
two years in which it was published: he obviously was stimulated by regaining
ready and unimpeded access to publication as well as by his desire to keep his
nephew well supplied with copy. Unfortunately Records ceased publication
in late 1836 because the marginal profit it showed was not consonant with the
great labour involved in editing it.110 From then onwards Thomson was again
looking for appropriate vehicles for his papers so that fourteen of his papers
published between r837 and r84r appeared in six different journals.lll One
can understand his enthusiasm for the Proceedings of the Glasgow Philosophical
Society which were first published in r841. As the revered President of that
Society, Thomson for a third time had ready access to a journal and not un-
expectedly most of his last papers were published in its Proceedings. Thomson's
own career as a publisher of research papers seems therefore to have flourished
106 Thomson to Dalton, 13 August 1818, in Roscoe and Harden, (21) 171-2.
107 Crum (8), 253.
108 See Royal Society Catalogue of Scientific Papers.
109 The nine journals in which he published 19 papers between 1827 and 1835 were the
Edinburgh Journal of Science (3), Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (I), Glasgow
Medical Journal (2), Philosophical Magazine (2), Annals of the Lyceum of New York (I),
Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (7), American Journal of Science (I), History
of the Berwickshire Naturalists' Club (I), and Annales de Chemie (I).
110 R. D. Thomson to Benjamin Silliman, 12 November 1836, Historical Society of
Pennsylvania, Gratz Collection, Case 12, Box 13.
111 These fourteen papers were published in Reports of the British A ssociation for the
Advancement of Science (8), Annalen der Pharmacie (I), Philosophical Magazine (2), American
Journal of Science (I), Comptes Rendus (I), and Bibliotheque Universelle (I).
32 J. B. MORRELL
when he enjoyed control of a journal or easy access to it. Yet even when he
had access to a journal Thomson did not encourage his pupils to publish indepen-
dently the work they had done in his laboratory. It is significant that the
results acquired by his students in each of the two major research programmes
he directed were published very largely as two books with Thomson as sole
author. He ackno,vledged the work they did, particularly in analysing
minerals, yet attempted to gain credit for himself. Unlike Liebig he regarded
the research done by his students in his laboratory under his aegis as his own
exclusive intellectual property.1I2 Given this sort of possessiveness, which
precluded Thomson from suggesting a problem to a student who then gradually
made it his own, it is not surprising that Thomson's students lacked the
publishing opportunities which Liebig's Annalen so generously afforded to his.
VI
The question of power is not one that generally looms largely in analyses of
past scientific activity, yet once science began to be institutionalized problems
of power and status inevitably arose. In the case of a university teacher who
was intent on creating and maintaining a research school, these problems
could be pressing . At the least they could deflect him from the running of his
school and erode his confidence; at the worst total lack of power could mean
that his research programme would remain unimplemented.
In the case of Liebig, some of his problems concerning status and power
were quickly solved and the majority solved by the mid r830s. Initially, of
course, during his first and only session as extraordinary professor, Liebig met
difficulties. 113 His fellow professors resented the way in which he had been
imposed on them by the Grand Duke of Hesse, they suspected his irregular
education, and no doubt at the bottom they feared his innovating zeal. W. L.
Zimmermann, the ordinary professor of chemistry, regarded him as a petulant
upstart and therefore refused to co-operate with him. In addition his vigorous
criticisms of the state of chemistry, his proposed remedies, and his hostility to
112 The exceptions seem to have been his two relatives R. D. Thomson, A. Steel, and
Richardson, a close friend of Thomson's son, who all published papers based on research
done in Thomson's laboratory. R. D. Thomson, "History and analysis of the Vanadianate
of Lead", Records of General Science, 1, 34-5, 1835; R. D. Thomson, tlChemical analysis of
Crucilite, ibid., 142-4; R. D. Thomson, "Analysis of Kirwanite, ibid., 219-20; R. D.
Thomson, "Examination of Hair Salt, or native sulphate of alumina and iron", ibid., 2,
55-61, 1835; T. Richardson, "Analysis of Wolfram", ibid., 1, 449-52, 1835; T. Thomson
and A. Steel, uChemical Analysis of Gadolinite, together with an examination of some salts
of Yttria and Cerium", ibid., 403-24.
113 R. E. Oesper, uJustus von Liebig-Student and Teacher", Journal of Chemical
Education, 4,1461-76 (1466),1927; E. Bed, "Justus Liebig", Journal of Chemical Education,
15, 553-62 (61), 1938.
the speculative Naturphilosophie of his eminent medical colleague Wilbrand

all threatened what they regarded as an unnecessary and disagreeable disturb-
ance of the status quo. These early conflicts were unexpectedly resolved when
Zimmermann, whose endless chicanery had deeply annoyed Liebig, was acciden-
tally drowned in 1825. As the man who was fortunately on the spot, Liebig
was appointed full professor in 1825, a promotion which was welcomed by most
of his colleagues who had begun to realize he was an asset to the University and
to themselves. From then onwards Liebig's path was less rough, though one of
his practises aroused bitter hostility from his colleagues. I t seems that the
majority of his laboratory students lacked the leaving-certificate based on the
classics and awarded by the Gymnasia, which in principle was indispensable for
those wanting to attend the University and Liebig's laboratory.114 Liebig
simply ignored what he regarded as restricting bureaucratic pedant y, but most
of his colleagues regarded his willingness to admit unqualified students as a per-
nicious and destructive lowering of standards. Liebig gradually won this
particular battle as his laboratory brought increasing fame to the University.
In particular Liebig helped to arrest the startling decline in total student
numbers which afflicted the University and other small German ones between
1831 and 1836.115 No doubt Liebig's colleagues realized that traditional
admission requirements if imposed would deter some students from attending
the University at a time when German universities were in particularly sharp
competition with each other for students and for their class fees. However
disreputable and even bizarre some of Liebig's attitudes and practises appeared
to them, his colleagues were compelled by his successes to acknowledge that
warts-and-all he was the university's outstanding feature: they therefore
gradually acquiesced in his innovations. Generally there seems little evidence
that Liebig's research school was hindered in its style of work and growth by
status or power problems with one exception which will be discussed in the
penultimate section of this paper: with characteristic aplomb and bravura he
exploited to the full what he regarded as his professorial rights. The battles
with colleagues in which he engaged did not erode his confidence in his ability
to mount a research school or deflect him significantly from his purposes. In
some ways, indeed, as a professor of chemistry he was well placed. Ensconsed
in the Philosophy faculty of a small university Liebig was not overburdened by
114Good (53), 562.
115 Between 1830 and 1836, the total number of students at Giessen dropped from about:
500 to about 300, and the number of medical students from about go to about 60. During
the same period the number of "registered" students with Liebig rose from about 10 to 20;
by 1843 the number had risen to about 65. See Wankmiiller (54), 5-6. Between 183<>-
and 1834 the total number of students at the University of Freiburg dropped from 865 to
434; at Heidelberg it declined from 828 to 518 between 1833 and 1834. See: "List of
Universities", The Quarterly Journal of Education, 9, 343-7 (344), 1835.
34 J. B. MORRELL
an excess of lo\v-level teaching. It is true that he taught a variety of lecture

courses, such as experimental chemistry, pharmaceutical chemistry to medical
students, agricultural chemistry, and stoichiometry all in 1826, and that he
taught fairly large numbers of pharmacists at Giessen.116 Nevertheless these
teaching duties did not mulct him of energy and purpose. As Liebig himself
confessed, one of Giessen's greatest virtues was that its small university was
distinguished by its relative lack of those distractions which tend to be endemic

in large universities and towns: "it was as if Providence had led me to the little
university. At a larger university or in a larger place my energies would have
been divided and dissipated, and it would have been much more difficult, and
perhaps impossible, to reach the goal at which I aimed; but at Giessen every-
thing was concentrated in work and in this I took passionate pleasure" .117
In the case of Thomson his energies were by no means totally devoted to his
research school. Though the University of Glasgow in principle attached
peculiar importance to chemistry and could boast of a distinguished chemical
lineage which began with Cullen and Black, Thomson found himself in a long
embittered and unsuccessful dispute about his own status.U8 For Thomson
the development of his research school and. of his subject became inseparable
from the question of his inferior status as a Regius Professor. Compared with
the so-called College Professors, the Regius Professors formed a minority group
\Jvhose privileges and rights were restricted. These Regius Professors were
"little better than tolerated aliens" so that the possibilities for abrasive political
infighting were enormous.119 As the most intellectually distinguished of the
Regius Professors and probably the fiercest and most experienced polemicist, too,
Thomson spent much time and energy in acting as their chief spokesman and
activist. Every document and political move concerning their status was
engineered by him or was a response to his efforts. He objected with his usual
aggressive tenacity to what he regarded as the deliberate degradation by the
College Professors of himself and of his subject. It should be noted that the
dispute behveen the Regius and College Professors, which began in earnest in
1807, was not solved until 1858 when the British government at last took
action. The incessant intensity of this internecine struggle for power and its
eroding effect on Thomson's confidence cannot be overestimated. Quite
116 H. F. Kilian, Die Universitaten Deutschlands in medicinisch-naturwissenschajtlicher
ltinsicht, Heidelberg and Leipzig, 1828, 288.
117 Liebig (14), 37.
118 The Glasgow lineage of Black, Cullen, John Robison, William Irvine, Thomas Charles
Hope, Robert Cleghorn and Thomson is described in A. Kent (ed.), An Eighteenth-cent'ury
lectureship in Chemistry, Glasgow, 1950. Morrell (42) gives an account of the question of
Thomson's inferior status as a Regius Professor in the University of Glasgow.
119 The phrase is taken from an official history by J. Coutts, A History oj the University
oj Glasgow, Glasgow, 1909, 337.
simply too much of Thomson's energy and time was necessarily spent in univer-
sity politics and too little on his research school.
In any event as a professor in the medical faculty of Scotland's second
largest university, which attracted in the early 1830S about 1,000 students,
Thomson was a very busy man.120 His main teaching duty was lecturing on
chemistry one hour a day six days a w"eekfor an academic session about half a
year long; from I830 onwards he seems to have taken on a second year class,
too.l21 In addition Thomson subjected his keen lecture-class students to an
hour's viva voce questioning twice a week.122 Furthermore, at least between
1817 and 1827 and probably beyond that period, Thomson lectured once a week
on mineralogy and natural history presumably because he regarded Lockhart
l\luirhead, the Professor of Natural History, as less than competent.123 Thomson
taught large numbers of students in his first year chemistry class which was
obligatory for medical students who intended to graduate. Inevitably there-
fore for most of these students Thomson's subject was merely one of several
pre-clinical ones and subsidiary to their chief aim. On the other hand, owing
to the system of Lernfreiheit which then operated in the Scottish universities,
any student, matriculated or occasional, could attend Thomson's lecture class
if he payed the class fee of £3 3s. ode The size of this first-year class during
Thomson's vital years at Glasgow is set out below.124
1817-8 213 1823-4 122 1829-30 222 1835-6 135
1818-9 190 1824-5 150 1830-1 188 1836-7 138
1819-20 151 1825-6 177 1831-2 175 1837-8 86
1820-1 101 1826-7 175 1832-3 188 1838-9 75
1821-2 153 1827-8 205 1833-4 190 1839-40 50
1822-3 116 1828-9 204 1834-5 156
No wonder that until 1837 Thomson felt he did more than his fair share of
teaching. As an examiner, too, he was so heavily committed that in spring
1826, for instance, he· spent about 130 hours orally examining candidates for
the M.D.125 In spite of teaching, tutoring and examining, Thomson managed
120 In 1830, the University of Glasgow had 20 professors to deal with about 1,000 students
in all; at Giessen about 30 professors and 10 Privatdozenten coped with about 500 students in
all.
121 Addison (63) indicates that from 1830 Thomson sometimes ran a second-year class
as well as his first-year one; Glasgow Evidence, 151.
122 Glasgow Evidence, 203.
123 Ibid., 152•
124 The sources for these figures are:
1817 to 1826, ibid., 527; 1826 to 1837, Report of the Glasgow University Commissioners,
Parliamentary Papers, 29, (1839), 71; for 1837 and 1838, Thomson to John Lee, 22 December
1838, National Library of Scotland, MS 3442, f. 202; and for 1839-40, Thomson to Ruther-
furd, 12 November 1839, National Library of Scotland, MS 9711, fi. 115-116.
125 Glasgow Evidence, 154.
J. B. MORRELL
during his prime to spend during term about five hours a day in the laboratory.126
It is true that he had a five month summer vacation in which to recuperate,
travel, research and publish; yet during the university term he was heavily
engaged in a multiplicity of tasks which inevitably distracted his attention
from his research school far more than was the case with Liebig.
VII
The extraordinary charismatic power which Liebig exerted on his pupils
showed in their loyalty to him. Above all their fierce pride in having been a
member of his school indicated the preternatural hold he had on them.
Examples of this sort of disciple-fetishism abound. Perhaps the most charming
and revealing is the tribute paid to Liebig by Hofmann in his famous Faraday
lecture (r875) delivered to the Chemical Society of London:
Like all the great generals of every age, Liebig was the spirit as well as
the leader of his battalions; and if he was followed so heartily it was
because, much as he was admired, he was loved still more. If I speak
somewhat fondly of Liebig, many around me are thinking of him fondly too,
for we were alike pupils of his. We remember his fascinating control
over every faculty, every sentiment that we possessed; and we still, in
our manhood now, remember how ready we were, as Liebig's young
companions in arms, to make any attack at his bidding, and follow
where he led. We felt then, we feel still, and never while we live shall
we forget Liebig's marvellous influence over us; and if anything could
be more astonishing than the amount of work he did with his own hands,
it was probably the mountain of chemical toil which he got us to go
through. I am sure that he loved us in return. Each word of his
carried instruction, every intonation of his voice bespoke regard; his
approval was a mark of honour, and of whatever else we might be proud,
our greatest pride of all was in having him for our master .127
This sort of charisma enabled Liebig to exact from his research school a remark-
ably intense and specialized mode of existence.128 Indeed those who studied
chemistry exclusively formed a distinct clan at the University of Giessen.
Liebig's laboratory students lived chemistry all day and every day. By
avoiding the traditional student dissipations and amusements, they formed a
distinct group detached from the other students. They did not aspire to the
liberal humanism enshrined in the University of Berlin (founded r809) under
Wilhelm von Humboldt, a Prussian bureaucrat and classical scholar.129 Nor
were they allowed by Liebig to deviate from the advancement of pure chemical
126 Ibid., 15I•

127 Hofmann (I5), IO.
1280esper (II2), 1471-2.
129 Ashby (I), 25.
knowledge into its impure applications. He offered a broad basic training

irrespective of the technical field which any student wanted to enter, and uncom-
promisingly refused to teach technical chemistry in his laboratory. Yet
students were enticed by his vehement assertion that a properly trained chemist
would be able to solve technical problems speedily and easily.
Liebig's charisma was apparent in the day to day arrangements which

obtained in his laboratory. It was particularly displayed between I8z4 and
r835 when Liebig, who lacked a private laboratory; worked in the same room
as his students under physical conditions which were far from ideal. During
those eleven vital years Liebig's influence on his laboratory students was exerted
through close physical and mental contact with them in an informal atmosphere
and situation. These were propitious conditions in which his charisma could
operate: matters would have been different had Liebig from the start been an
encapsulated professor whom his students rarely met or saw. The inadequate
laboratory arrangements in those years did not demoralize the laboratory
school: on the contrary, inspired by Liebig's example and insistence that talent
amounts to will and work they produced among his students a fraternal co-
hesion.130 In that sense the unheated balance room, the cramped size of the
laboratory, the absence of fume chambers, and the fanned portable coal furnaces
were challenges to ingenuity and adaptiveness.13I So, too, were the pedagogic
methods which Liebig employed on his laboratory students throughout his
Giessen career. His regime was characterized by its incessantly challenging
stimulus and by its promotion of self-reliance and responsibility in the students.
As he recalled in his fragmentary autobiography:
Actual teaching in the laboratory, of which practised assistants took
charge, was only for the beginners; the progress of my special students
depended on themselves. I gave the task and supervised its execution;
as the radii of a circle all have their common centre. There was no
actual instruction; I received from each individual every morning a
report upon what he had done on the previous day, as well as his views on
what he was engaged upon. I approved or made my criticisms. Every-
one was obliged to follow his own course. In the association and constant
intercourse \vith each other, and by each participating in the work of all,
everyone learned from the others. Twice a week in winter, I gave a
sort of review of the most important questions of the day; it was mainly
a report on my own and their work combined with the researches of
other chemists.132
As the charismic centre of the laboratory's activities, Liebig even expected his
students to undergo considerable physical pain in the cause of the advancement
130 Volhard (7), i, 12.
131 Ibid., i, 62-3.
132 Liebig (14), 40.
J. B. MORRELL
of chemical Wissenschaft. When he first prepared anhydrous formic acid he

ordered several students to bare their arms on which he dabbed the corrosive
liquid: they complied unflinchingly.133 Such was the esprit de corps he engen-
dered and sustained.
In contrast with Liebig, Thomson can hardly be called a charismatic figure
or leader. With the exception of his nephew R. D. Thomson, his labora-
tory pupils rarely thought of themselves as Thomson disciples. None of his

students, therefore, paid to him such a fervent public tribute as Hofmann paid
to Liebig though many regarded him with esteem and maybe affection.134 It
is surely significant that between 1857 and 1948 Thomson's career and life
aroused no sustained analysis or biography whatsoever: in this respect even
his pupils "deserted" him after R. D. Thomson andCrum, his primary obitu-
arists, had paid their respects.135 His regime, though specialized and devoted
to chemistry as an independent science and not a trade, did not promote to a
large extent self-reliance in students. Nor did he incessantly provoke them
with research challenges. Because he regarded his students to some extent
as laboratory assistants doing work for him and not for themselves, he did not
try generally to stimulate his students to do independent research as Liebig did.
This semi-authoritarian attitude precluded the existence of that informality in
which charisma is most effectively exerted. In any case even if he had possessed
the desire to encourage his laboratory students to work independently, the
means to realize this aim were not perfect: I have already drawn attention to
the inadequacies of Thomson's programme, technique and publication oppor-
tunities. At bottom, perhaps, Thomson's personality did not allow him to
create his own chemical church, though there is no doubt that he successfully
communicated the spirit of enquiry to his students and furthered their careers
when he could. He was reluctant to pay respect to others, and was proud of
his bluntness. His brusqueness, arrogance, ill-temper and jealousy were
displayed most conspicuously in the polemical wars he waged,136 Clearly as a
133 Good (53), 561-2. Though the story may be apocryphal, it illustrates the contagious
and overwhelming effect of Liebig's enthusiasm on his students.
134 Crum (8), 254.
135 The revival of interest in Thomson after a lacuna of almost a century was heralded
by: H. S. Klickstein, "Thomas Thomson, Pioneer Historian of Chemistry", Chymia, 1,
37-53, 1948; and J. R. Partington, "Thomas Thomson, 1773-1852", Annals of Science, 6,
115-26, 1949.
136 Both Crum (8), 255, and R. D. Thomson (8), 153, found it necessary to apologize for
Thomson's peremptory deportment. His jealousy and ill-temper surprised Constable the
publisher: see Constable to John Leslie, 20 February 1822, National Library of Scotland,
MS 331, ff. 157-8. In the mid 1830S "as members of the Philosophical Society of Glasgow,
Thomson invariably treated Graham with an amount of respect and even deference which
that brusque and quick-tempered old philosopher too frequently failed to extend to others":
see T. E. Thorpe, Essays in Historical Chemistry, 2nd ed., London, 1902, 207.
public figure he was neither loved nor admired but respected for his life of stern
rectitude, proud independence and unflagging industry. Though his students
no doubt regarded him as an enigmatic "card" Thomson's deportment in one
crucial respect disturbed strangers and must have hindered the growth of
essential mutual respect between his laboratory students and himself. Sir
Robert Christison, who esteemed Thomson highly as a chemist and as a poly-

math, nevertheless recalled one of Thomson's less attractive features in a way
that explains the limitation of his charisma:
He was known by his friends to be at bottom a warm-hearted, good-
natured man, who did unobtrusively many a kind act. No man could
have imagined, to look at him, that the most glaring ingredient in his
character, so far as conduct was concerned, was an uncontrollable
propensity to sneer-not behind backs, but in presence of his subject.
He did so without any appearance of anger, malice, or sense of humour,
but rather with a mournful look, as if sorrowing that he should feel
called upon to exercise in the particular case his privilege as follower of
Thersites. Hence, though his sneers were often bitter, and not infre-
quently made, his friends, when assailed, only laughed; but strangers
were astonished, and if not quick in apprehension, were apt to resent his
censorship as insolence.137
I suspect that even students like Andrews who went to Glasgow specifically to
study under Thomson were not attracted by his chilling sarcasm.
VIII
The last element in the research school situation is financial support from
an institution. This was, of course, intimately connected with the power,
charisma, programme and reputation of the director. But I want to discuss
it in quite arbitrary separation from the other elements I have previously
considered because of its importance in permitting the conversion of a temporary
school into a permanent institutionalized one. In particular I shall consider
the three chief aspects of financial support: the director's salary, his laboratory
accommodation, and the laboratory expenses granted to him.
In his first year at Giessen, during which his small laboratory in the wing
of an army barracks was opened, Liebig's salary was 300 florins (£26) and the
tiny amount of roo fl. (£9) was given to him by the University for laboratory
expenses.13S In April r825 his salary was raised to 500 fl. (£45).139 After
Zimmermann's death in July r825 and Liebig's promotion, his salary was
137 Christison (68), i, 366-7. This description refers to 1827 when Christison spent
part of his honeymoon chez Thomson in Glasgow.
138 Volhard (7), i, 55, 100.
189 Ibid., i, 101.
4° J. B. MORRELL
increased to 800 fl. (£69) and the laboratory fund to an estimated 400 fl. (£34).140
For the next ten years until r835 Liebig's salary and laboratory fund from the
University seem to have been inadequate to meet the steadily increasing cost
he incurred in running his laboratory. It appears that the annual cost of the
laboratory was met partly by Liebig, who spent 3°0-4°0 fl. (£26-34) per year,
and by the University.141 The latter's contribution between r825 and r835,
which from r828 included the salary of r50 fl. per year paid to the laboratory
steward, is set out below:142
r825 446 fl. (£38) r829 6r8 fl. (£53) r833 6r9 fl. (£53)
r826 455 fl. (£39) r830 845 fl. (£73) r834 594 fl. (£5r)
r827 497 fl. (£43) r83r 649 fl. (£56) r835 774 fl. (£67)
r828 6r4 fl. (£53) r832 6r8 fl. (£53)
During these ten years the University paid the salary of a laboratory steward
(Le. Famulus), while Liebig himself paid a laboratory assistant 320 fl. (£28) a
year.143 It would appear that in this decade the expenses of the laboratory
(materials, apparatus and the assistant) were met roughly equally by Liebig
and the University, i.e. the government of Hesse Darmstadt. It also seems
that the University was not as indifferent to his enterp ise as he suggested.
Nor should it be forgotten that Liebig's remuneration was gained from fees
paid to him by his students as well as from his salary. Clearly, however, these
financial arrangements were unsatisfactory for the energetic, ambitious and
anxious Liebig. Not surprisingly in r829 he unsuccessfully asked the Chancellor
of Hessen, von Linde, for an increase of salary. By r833 he was calling for a
new lecture room, a proper laboratory, and again an increase in salary; addition-
ally he threatened to resign, and was suffering from nervous exhaustion. The
Chancellor of the University was reluctant to lose him, promised relief and in
r834 raised his salary to 850 fl. (£73).144
In r835, no doubt as a response to the invitation he had received from the
University of Antwerp, his salary was increased to r250 fl. (fr08); and the
University not only continued to pay the laboratory steward but also began to
pay Ettling, the laboratory assistant, a salary of 300 fl. (£26) which previously
Liebig had met from his own pocket.145 In the same year, at an approximate
cost of 5035 fl. (f435) the University converted the old auditorium, partitioned
off a small private laboratory for Liebig, and enlarged the laboratory.146 This
140 Ibid., i, 63, 102.
141 Ibid., i, 68.

Liebig's own view of his situation is set out in his letter of 12 August
1833 to von Linde, the Chancellor of the University: see ibid., i, 67-74.
142 Ibid., i, 64.
143 Ibid., i, 68.
144 Ibid., i, 76.

145 Ibid., i, 80.
146 Ibid., i, 79.

THE CHEMIST BREEDERS
combination of better financial arrangements and improved accommodation

in the laboratory permitted Liebig to expand his student numbers at this time:
it was about r835, for instance, that the trek of keen young British chemists
to the Giessen laboratory began. Fortunately for Liebig his fame was then
sufficient to induce other universities to make attractive offers to him. As a
loyal Hessian, Liebig used these opportunities as levers to prize salary increases
from the grudging government. In I837, for instance, his refusal of an invita-
tion to go to the University of St. Petersburg enabled him to gain an increase
in salary of 400 fl. to r650 (£r42).147 It also enabled him in r839 to have built
a new larger laboratory to his own design at a cost of r2,000-r3,000 fl. (£r,020-
r,r20) which was borne by the University. At the same time the laboratory
fund was substantially increased to r,50o fl. (£r30).148 Liebig's star was then
so much in the ascendant that, after he had refused in r840 an invitation from
the Austrian government to go to the University of Vienna, hi:; salary was
raised in r84r to 3,200 fl. (£275) and the laboratory expenses increased in r843
to r,900 fl. (£r64).149 It is worth commenting that in the seven years between
r833 and r84r Liebig's salary rose from 800 fl. (£69) to 3,200 fl. (£275) and the
laboratory expenses paid by the government from about 620 fl. (£53) to r,500 fl.
(£r30). These dramatic increases resulted from Liebig's fame as a teacher,
researcher, editor and writer; from the pressure exerted by the town of Giessen
which gained financially from his presence at the university; and not least
from the sharply competitive nature of the European university system which
Liebig exploited so successfully to his own financial advantage.
There seems little doubt that in r835 Liebig's university began to take
some financial responsibility for his research school. By r839 it had committed
itself firmly to his enterprise. The implications of this move towards regular
institutional financial support were so important that they were not lost on
Liebig's contemporaries. For instance, William Gregory, a pioneer British
organic chemist and one of Liebig's first British pupils, saw that the r839
financial arrangements permitted Liebig to run a research school of moderate
size without having himself to meet its cost. Gregory pointed out that when
the necessarily large expenses of a laboratory were borne by a teacher who
charged his students a low fee the financial loss he entailed discouraged him
from maintaining or enlarging the size of his laboratory class. He also saw
that, if high and "realistic" fees were charged to cover such expenses, "but few
students study practical chemistry on these terms. In short, the attempt to
throw the burden on the students effectually prevents the formation of an
147 Ibid., i, 80.

148 Ibid., i, 8r; Gregory (56), 22.
149 Ibid., i, 80, 84.
42 J. B. MORRELL
efficient school of research" .150 But the government of Hesse-Darmstadt,

Gregory argued, had broken the impasse by subsidising Liebig's research school
on a large scale from 1839. In particular, in 1839 Liebig enjoyed a new
enlarged laboratory which could accommodate up to fifty students, an adequate
salary of 1,650 fl. (£142), and a government grant for laboratory expenses of
1,500 fl. (£130) which apparently met the cost of having up to fifteen students
in the laboratory; and of course from 1835 he had been helped by a salaried
laboratory assistant as well as the traditional salaried laboratory steward.
When Liebig took on more than fifteen laboratory students, he himself had to
pay from his salary and fees the increased expenses of a larger laboratory class.151
The really important point is that from 1839 the Hessian government met the
expenses associated with a limited number of laboratory students (fifteen). In
this way money was not put directly into Liebig's pocket, yet he could accom-
modate up to fifteen students in his laboratory without suffering financial loss.
From the secure financial base established in 1839 and expanded by 1843
Liebig was enabled at his discretion to enlarge his research school which was
unprecedented in its size and in its volume of publication. Furthermore this
financial liberality of the Hessian government permitted Liebig from 1839 "to
open his laboratory, provided as it is with everything necessary for research, on
terms which allow almost every student with ease to avail himself of the oppor-
tunity".152 Though his fees were charged at his discretion, it seems that from
1839 Liebig's laboratory students paid 78 fl.. (£6 14s. od.) for a course which
ran six full days per week for eight to nine months. In short, the financial
support for his school which Liebig at last extracted from a reluctant government
in 1835, 1839 and 1843, permitted him to expand it to an unrivalled degree. The
year 1839 in particular was very significant because in that year the world's
outstanding research school in chemistry, and possibly in science as a whole,
began to be seriously supported financially by its university; and the inadequacy
of financing a research school solely from a professor's personal initiative and
pocket was thereby publicly acknowledged.
Like Liebig Thomson was aggressively persistent in extracting from his
university laboratory accommodation in which students could work. During
his first session at Glasgow he was irritated by the lack of a laboratory, but
within six months of his appointment the university agreed to furnish the logic
class-room as a room for his lecture class and to convert the old chemistry
class-room into a laboratory.153 By autumn 1818 the laboratory, equipped
Gregory (56), 18.

150
Ibid., 20-2.
151
152 Ibid., 20.
153 Thomson to Napier, I8 March I8I8, British Museum, MS 34, 6I2, f. I76; Records of
Glasgow College (Faculty Minutes), 26 March I8I8.
with good apparatus provided partly by the university and partly by Thomson,
was opened to students. It had defects: it was damp and could accommodate
only ten students. It should be noted that the British Government, the
patron of Thomson's chair, contributed nothing to the cost of this laboratory
or to his other departmental expenses of any kind; and between r8r8 and r840
it paid him a salary of only £50 per year. This first laboratory was created by
the joint initiative of Thomson and his university, acting without government
support. It is clear that in the r820s the type of his laboratory teaching was
such that his annual salary failed to meet his unavoidable laboratory expenses
which he alleged constituted a severe drain on his financial resources.154
Again like Liebig he pressed hard for better accommodation particularly
after r826. His special lever was the increasing size of his lecture class for
which the accommodation was inadequate. By r827, for instance, his class
was so big that extra space for students had to be created in it .by partly dis-
mantling some of the improvements made to it the previous year at a cost of
£70.155 In r828 and r829 Thomson applied to the university for a new class-
room.156 By the latter year his case was irresistible. In spite of further
alterations made by the university to his lecture-room at the beginning of
session r829-30, his class was so big that he was forced to divide it' into two
groups to which he lectured at a separate hour.
The University, controlled by the College professors, responded to this
challenge in an enlightened way.157 Perhaps they knew that Thomson's
refusal to be enticed to the new University of London in r826 meant that he
was determined to stay to develop chemistry at Glasgow, and no doubt they
welcomed the increasing number of medical students which he, Hooker and
Burns attracted to the university.l58 Perhaps, too, they hoped that their
financial munificence in providing a new teaching laboratory as well as a new
classroom would embarrass him into rare silence. Whatever their motives, the
new building for the chemistry department, erected in Shuttle ,Street outside
the university walls at a cost of about £5,000 was opened to students in r831.
Though Thomson thought that the extra-mural location of his new building
\vas a deliberate attack on his status as a Regius professor, his new teaching and
research laboratory was far superior to his previous one: it was not damp and
it could accommodate more students. Even the querulous Thomson was
1M Morrell (42), 254.

155 Faculty Minutes, 8 June 1826.
156 Faculty Minutes, 4 January 1828, IS March 1829.
157 On the Shuttle Street laboratory, see A. Kent, "The Shuttle Street Laboratories",
Glasgow University Gazette (1956), number 25.
158 The growth of the medical school at the University of Glasgow in the I820S hinged
on the work done by Thomson, Hooker, and John Burns (professor of surgery, 1815-50).
44 J. B. MORRELL
satisfied. He had the top three floors of the building for his chemistry depart-
ment, the ground floor and cellars being rented to tenants and shopkeepers who
were occasionally disorderly. With characteristic mercantile acumen the
university used part of the Shuttle Street building as a financial investment.
Nevertheless it was conspicuously generous to Thomson in providing him in
1831 with new accommodation which cost about three times as much as
Liebig's eight years later. It was in this laboratory that Thomson and his
school implemented part of his second research programme.
Yet ironically Thomson acquired the Shuttle Street laboratory only when
his exhausting career was coming to an end. Apart from the deficiencies of
programme, technique, publication, and personality, which I have discussed
previously, Thomson was fifty-eight years old in 1831, whereas Liebig was only
thirty-six when in r839 he acquired his new building at Giessen. In any event,
between 1835 and r84r Thomson deliberately threw himself into unsuccessful
political agitation for reform of the Scottish universities in general and of the
power structure of the University of Glasgow in particular. But after about
1834 several developments over which he had no control reduced the scale of
his laboratory school. The sudden death of his wife in late r834 staggered
him.159 His own pupil Graham at the neighbouring Anderson's University
was by this time a powerful and younger rival who attracted students such as
Lyon Playfair who apparently never considered enrolling for Thomson's
laboratory class.16o In any event the decline suffered in the late r830s by the
medical school of the university together with Scotland's economic depression
from 1837 contributed to the marked reduction of the size of his lecture and
laboratory classes. By session r839-40 he had only fifty in the former and
four in the latter. In the late r830s therefore Thomson's total remuneration
from class fees and fixed annual salary of £50 dropped most unpleasantly: in
1833-34 it was £587; six years later it was about £200. Thomson's star was
by this time very much descendant: in the very year when the Hessian govern-
ment gave to Liebig's school favourable financial arrangements, Thomson
could not afford a laboratory assistant.161 No wonder that he demanded from
the British government an increase of salary. His persistence was rewarded
in r840 when for the first time in his professorial career his salary was at last
raised to £200 per year as a reward for past service. Lacking a retirement
pension Thomson held his chair until his death, but from r84r his protege
R. D. Thomson lectured on organic chemistry and ran the practical class.
It seems that before r83r Thomson's physical accommodation for his
159Crum (8), 254.

160T. W. Reid, Memoirs and Correspondence of Lyon Play/air, London, 1899, 36.
161 Morrell (42), 261-2; Thomson to Rutherfurd, 12 November 1839, National Library
of Scotland, MS 9711, fl. 115-6.

laboratory students was inadequate: in particular it was so small that he had to

turn many prospective students away. After 1831 laboratory accommodation
was not a problem, but the joint force of matters previously discussed prevented
him from exploiting it to the full as the home of a research school. One other
point needs to be stressed. Though the university provided considerable
capital outlay in 1818 and in 1831 for Thomson's laboratories, he always met
the annual laboratory expenses for materials and assistance and much of the
apparatus from his own pocket. For that reason his laboratory class and
school necessarily involved him in financialloss.162 In that sort of situation
there was every financial inducement to diminish and not to expand the
facilities for practical work. At no stage in his career did Thomson enjoy the
services of a laboratory steward and an assistant whose salaries were paid by
his institution or by the British government; nor did he ever receive an annual
laboratory grant which would have enabled him to take up to a certain number
of students without incurring financial loss. The contrast with Liebig is
obvious: Thomson's school always cost him money; after 1839 Liebig's, up to
a certain size, cost him nothing.
IX
In 1885 Sir William Thomson, professor of natural philosophy in the Uni-
versityof Glasgow (1846-99), asserted that physics laboratories in universities
"are now advancing to something of the method and consistent system that
Thomas Thomson and Liebig so greatly gave to chemical laboratories" .163
Though he was patently keen to pay tribute to the man whose laboratory he
had attended in session 1838-39, Sir William's point was not totally invalid.164
I have tried to argue that Liebig and Thomson were the first professors of
chemistry in their respective university systems who launched research schools
during the 1820S and the 1830s. For that reason alone they are worth com-
paring. Of course Liebig created and developed his school with triumphant
success; but Thomson, who was equally thrusting and ambitious, was not by
any means totally successful with his school. I have also tried to show that
their relative degrees of success can be understood most fully if we take into
account the intellectual, technical, institutional, psychological and financial
elements in their situations.
The model I have suggested suffers from the limitation that it tends to be
an idealizing rationalization of Liebig's success. Inevitably Thomson fares
162 R. D. Thomson (8), 146.

163 W. Thomson, "Scientific Laboratories", Nature, 31, 409-13 (411), 1885.
164 S. P. Thompson, The Life of William Thomson, Baron Kelvin of Largs, London, 1910,
i, 174.
J. B. MORRELL
badly in the comparison, even though these two pioneers of the r820s shared,
some aims. Yet the model does emphasize and reveal why and how Thomson
innovated: the features of his research school are thereby more sharply delinea-
ted. For this reason the model may illuminate the careers of other nineteenth-
century chemists and groups. For instance I would agree that the Society
of Arcueil may be regarded as a private embryonic research school whose
programme was to solve problems concerning capillarity, light, heat and chemical
affinity in a framework of short range attractive and repulsive forces.165 It
may also help us to understand the larger problem of the detailed way in which
in the 1830S leadership in chemistry began to pass from France to the German
states and their universities. It may illuminate the failure of French chemists
such as Gay-Lussac, Dumas, Chevreul, and that ill-fated pair Laurent and
Gerhardt, to establish institutionalized research schools. It emphasizes the
decisive contribution to the professionalization of chemistry made in Germany
by Liebig, Wohler, Bunsen, and later by Hofmann and Kolbe. It gives point
to the well-known individualism of British scientists as displayed by Davy,
Dalton, Faraday and Graham, none of whom founded research schools.166 It
draws attention to the important pioneering British research schools run by
Thomson, Hofmann, and H. E. Roscoe. In short it may help to throw light
on one of the most important and difficult problems posed by nineteenth-
century science, i.e. the comparative history of its professionalization.
Acknowledgements
For valuable help and criticism I am indebted to Drs. W. H. Brock, W. V.
Farrar, and Arnold W. Thackray. For permission to refer to manuscripts and
to quote from them I am grateful to: The Trustees of the British Museum; the
Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia; the Trustees of the National
Library of Scotland; the Royal Society of Edinburgh; the Scottish Record
Office; the Clerk of Senate and the Reference Librarian of the University of
Glasgow; Mrs. Seton Dickson, Symington, Ayrshire, the owner of the Pollok-
Morris manuscripts; and the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Miinchen.
165 Crosland (15), 297-308; O. Hannaway's review of Crosland, Isis, 60, 578-81, 1969;
and R. Fox, "The Laplacian Programme for Physics", Boletin de la Academie Nacional de
Ciencias de la Republica Argentina, 48, 429-37, 1970.
166 J. B. Morrell, "Individualism and the Structure of British Science in 1830", Historical
Studies in the Physical Sciences, 3, 183-204, 1971.

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THE CHEMIST BREEDERS: THE RESEARCH SCHOOLS

OF LIEBIG AND THOMAS THOMSON

IT IS a just common-place that during the nineteenth century the activity

* Department of Social Sciences, University of Bradford, Bradford 7, Yorkshire.

AMBIX Vol. XIX Part 1 March 1972

by J. N. Fuchs at the University of Landshut in Bavaria, and again from 1820

Nevertheless Liebig's was the first institutional as opposed to private

Thomson to Robert Jameson, professor of natural history at the University

by Thomas Charles Hope, Black's successor in the chemistry chair at the

5 J. B. Morrell, "Practical chemistry in the University of Edinburgh, 1799-1843",

institutions it depended largely on the reputation of the master. If his stand-

9 F. Bacon, Novum Organon, aphorism 122 in J. M. Robertson (ed.), The Philosophical

students published without obstacle in a journal which created and consolidated

tion. Yet for a potentially valid intellectual programme to be implemented,

12 The emergence of disciple-fetishism is stressed by Ashby (1), 26.

director envisaged or implemented and to the related question of his reputation

chemistry. 17 In the newly emerging field of organic chemistry, however, only

in organic chemistry was impossible. His acute premonition led him to

Liebig (14), 38-9.

20 Partington (17). iv, 300.

Chemistry by Experiment (1825), which he thought had raised chemistry to the

22 Thomson to Dalton, 19 April 1825, in Roscoe and Harden (21), 178-9.

mineralogy to a full science.28 No doubt his private ambitions were to displace

assistant editor of the Supplement to the Third Edition of the Encyclopaedia

28 See "Mineralogy", Supplement to the Third Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica

students ,vho revelled in his punctiliously organised and spectacular lecture-

in Thomson's laboratory in 1807.40 Two other members of this laboratory class,

42 J. B. Morrell, "Thomas Thomson: Professor of Chemistry and University Reformer",

10AIS + 5 (~~Mg + ~3 Cal + i3

technique on which his programme was to be based, whereas Thomson's

competitive field of mineralogical analysis only marginally elevated his reputa-

As university teachers both Liebig and Thomson had access to a regular

53 H. G. Good, "On the- early history of Liebig's laboratory", Journal of Chemical

available to those who had already acquired scientific distinction. Clearly a

students to work in the Giessen laboratory. British students, in particular,

medical students in order to convert them to chemists. As chemistry was an

sequently attained chemical eminence seem to have worked in his laboratory as

and regularly attended Thomson's lectures.65 In the laboratory that session

75 Thomson, junior, (1817-1878), worked in Liebig's laboratory in 1837. His father

years a practical student of chemistry in my laboratory and has acquired

private teacher of chemistry and chemical editor of Brewsters' Edinburgh

analysis. 97 It is significant that the nearest he came to producing such a work

The que3tion of publication opportunities is a relatively simple one. During

102See Royal Society Catalogue of Scientific Papers, and Paolini (7).

105 Stenhouse, "Darstellung und Analyse des Hippursaure-Aethers", Annalen der

Philosophy, a journal strongly slanted to chemistry. Between I8r8 and r820

the speculative Naturphilosophie of his eminent medical colleague Wilbrand

an excess of lo\v-level teaching. It is true that he taught a variety of lecture

distinguished by its relative lack of those distractions which tend to be endemic

126 Ibid., 15I•

knowledge into its impure applications. He offered a broad basic training

Liebig's charisma was apparent in the day to day arrangements which

of chemical Wissenschaft. When he first prepared anhydrous formic acid he

tory pupils rarely thought of themselves as Thomson disciples. None of his

Robert Christison, who esteemed Thomson highly as a chemist and as a poly-

141 Ibid., i, 68.

144 Ibid., i, 76.

146 Ibid., i, 79.