The Life and Work of
Friedrich Wöhler (1800 - 1882)

This monograph includes not only the text by Robin Keen but also supplementary materials written by the editor, Johannes Büttner, and by the historians of chemistry William H. Brock and Günther Beer. This book is the first detailed scientific biography of Friedrich Wöhler, one of the most eminent European chemists of the nineteenth century. lt also contains a nearly complete documentation and interpretation of Wöhler's chemical works, including his translations of textbooks and reference works as well as his entries in the Handwörterbuch der reinen and angewandten Chemie (ed. J. Liebig, J.C. Poggendorff, and F. Wöhler, Vols. 1-2,4 [1842, 1849]). The volume presents deep insights into the problems in organic and, in particular, inorganic chemistry treated experimentally by Wöhler between 1820 and 1880 and reveals the social conditions of scientific research and teaching experienced by a German university professor in the middle of the nineteenth century. Wöhler's original publications are analyzed by comparing his results with those of his contemporaries. The book serves as a kind of reference work not only an the work of Wöhler but also an the history of numerous chemicals, particularly chemical elements and organic substances like cyanic acid and uric acid.

The principal stages in the education and the life of Wöhler, more or less known from earlier biographical sketches (e.g., by A.W. Hofman and G. Schwedt), are mentioned as the background to his diverse professional duties and the development of his chemical work. An anlysis of his avtivities within the relatively new university discipline of chemistry is the principal goal of the book. Fascinated by private chemical experimentation from his school days at the Gymnasium in Frankfurt (Main). Wöhler was trained in medicine at Marburg and Heidelberg from 1820 to 1823. He continued chemical experiments in the field of physiological chemistry under the guidance of Leopold Gmelin and then joined the laboratory of J.J. Berzelius in Stockholm in 1823-1824. The intense scientific exchange between the two chemists that began there was sustained until the death of Berzelius in 1848. While in Sweden, Wöhler analyzed minerals collected on expeditions together with Berzelius and prepared selenium and lithium using a new method Berzelius created in 1818, but he studied little organic chemistry, working only an cyanic acid, which would become one of his chief subjects later on.

At this first position at a university laboratory in Berlin (1825-1831), during his stay in Kassel (1831-1836), and during his long professorship at the University of Göttingen, Wöhler focused on inorganic chemistry - that is, on the preparation and anlysis of the pricipal metals and nonmetallic elements and their compounds. This work ist discribed in detail by Keen, who lists more than twenty-five elements investigated by Wöhler. The analysis of elements was closely connected with Wöhler's interest in mineral chemistry. In 1832, while based in Kassel and without a laboratory, Wöhler found the opportunity to work with his friend J. Liebig on organic substances in the Gießen laboratory. They analized bitter almonds, identified some components, and characterized some "benzoyl" compounds. Wöhler's other work with organic compounds - particularly the cyanic acid, cyanates, and uric acid he studied from the 1830s to the 1840s, partly in collaboration with Liebig - is described in detail. The Final appendix presents Wöhler's students in Göttingen and a list of his laboratory assistans, showing his impact throughout Europe and in the United States. Wöhler refused hypothetical generalizations and was not a founder of any new theory: this book emphasizes the importance of his intense experimental research on the natural chemicals for the development of nineteenth-century chemistry.

Unfortunately, the next includes some distorted passages and some regrettable misprints (see, e.g., pp. 31-34, 107, 420, 434, 455, 472, 475f; the correct title of the French chemical journal was Annales de chimie, ou recueil ( ... ) concernant la chimie, les arts qui en dépendent et ( ... ). Nevertheless, The Life and Work of Friedrich Wöhler (1800-1882) is an important contribution to the internalist history of chemistry and should be purchased by every library in the history of sciense.

Brigitte Hoppe