The Alleged Decadence of German Chemistry

Abstract

As a man of business, more or less interested in the course of chemical discovery in so far as it affects chemical products of market value, I have for so many years been accustomed to take note of the rapid strides made by Germany in the chemical industries, that the statement contained in the article by “W. J. P.” in your issue of December 27 (p. 214) has struck me with amazement. The writer says that “all students of contemporary chemical literature will agree that in Germany the science of chemistry has been in rapid decadence during recent years.” This statement seems to me so completely at variance with my own experience that I have consulted chemical friends as to its accuracy, and I cannot find any chemist who agrees with this verdict. The consensus of opinion is, in fact, all in the opposite direction. “W. J. P.” himself admits, as a generally recognised principle, that supremacy in any particular industry goes hand in hand with supremacy in the related sciences. Every one of the discoveries recorded in his own paper has been made in Germany, and he himself points out that the new industry is “almost wholly of German origin.” Of course, as an English merchant, I hold no brief for German products, but having long ago recognised the importance of the connection between science and industry, which the author emphasises, and seeing what Germany has been doing of late years, I perhaps innocently attributed the progress of that country to their superior system of training in chemistry and related sciences, and to the readiness of their manufacturers to avail themselves of the results of scientific discovery. For the sake of British industry, I shall be only too glad to learn that I was mistaken; but since no chemist of my acquaintance agrees with the writer, and since he himself puts forward a whole body of German discoveries in order to tell us that chemical science is undergoing “rapid decadence” in that country, I cannot but feel that there is such a glaring contradiction between the facts recorded and the conclusions arrived at by the writer that some further explanation as to his meaning is necessary.