Forerunners
Robert Boyle and Marie Boas Hall. Robert Boyle on Natural Philosophy: An Essay with Selections from His Writings. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1980 (reprint of 1965 edition, Indiana University Press).
Brenda Buchanan, editor. Gunpowder: The History of an International Technology. Bath, United Kingdom: Bath University Press, 1996.
Archibald Clow; Nan L. Clow. The Chemical Revolution. London: Gordon & Breach Science Publishers, 1992.
Arthur Donovan. Antoine Lavoisier: Science, Administration and Revolution. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Du Pont: The Autobiography of an American Enterprise. Wilmington, Del.: E. I. Du Pont de Nemours & Co., 1952. Distributed by Charles Scribner & Sons.
Henry Guerlac. Lavoisier—The Crucial Year: The Background and Origin of His First Experiments on Combustion in 1772. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1961.
Frederic L. Holmes. Lavoisier and the Chemistry of Life: An Exploration of Scientific Discovery. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985.
Michael Hunter, editor. Robert Boyle, by Himself and His Friends: With a Fragment of William Woton's Lost Life of Boyle. Brookfield, Vt.: William Pickering, 1994.
———. Robert Boyle Reconsidered. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Jean-Pierre Poirier. Lavoisier: Chemist, Biologist, Economist. Translated, with an introduction by Charles C. Gillispie. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996. Also available from the Chemical Heritage Foundation.
Joseph Priestley. A Scientific Autobiography of Joseph Priestley, 1733–1804, Selected Scientific Correspondence. Edited, with commentary by Robert E. Schofield. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1966.
Rose-Mary Sargent. The Diffident Naturalist: Robert Boyle and the Philosophy of Experiment. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.
Truman Schwartz; John McEvoy, editors. Motion toward Perfection: The Achievement of Joseph Priestley. Boston: Skinner House Books, 1990.
Theory and Production of Gases
Maurice P. Crosland. Gay-Lussac: Scientist and Bourgeois. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1978.
Kenne Fant. Alfred Nobel: A Biography. Translated by Marianne Ruuth. New York: Arcade, 1993.
L. F. Haber. The Poisonous Cloud: Chemical Warfare in the First World War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.
Mikael Hard. Machines Are Frozen Spirit: The Scientification of Refrigeration and Brewing in the 19th Century. Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag; Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1994. Includes information on Carl von Linde.
Dietrich Stoltzenberg. Fritz Haber: Chemist, Nobel Laureate, German, Jew. Philadelphia: Chemical Heritage Foundation, 2004 (translated from the German, Fritz Haber: Chemiker, Nobelpreisträger, Deutscher, Jude [Weinheim, Germany/New York: VCH, 1994]).
Electrochemistry and Electrochemical Industries
Edward G. Acheson. A Pathfinder. Port Huron, Mich.: Acheson Industries, 1965.
E. N. Brandt. Growth Company: Dow Chemical's First Century. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1997.
Murray Campbell; Harrison Hatton. Herbert H. Dow: Pioneer in Creative Chemistry. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1951.
Geoffrey Cantor; David Gooding; Frank A. J. L. James. Michael Faraday. Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1996.
Charles C. Carr. Alcoa: An American Enterprise. New York: Rinehart, 1952.
Elisabeth Crawford. Arrhenius: From Ionic Theory to the Greenhouse Effect. Canton, Mass.: Science History Publications, 1996.
Junius David Edwards. Immortal Woodshed: The Story of the Inventor Who Brought Aluminum to America. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1955. A biography of Charles Hall.
Margaret B. W. Graham; Bettye H. Pruitt. R&D for Industry: A Century of Technical Innovation at Alcoa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Harold Hartley. Sir Humphry Davy. London: Nelson, 1966.
David Knight. Humphry Davy: Science and Power. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Evan M. Melhado. Jacob Berzelius: The Emergence of His Chemical System. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1981.
Evan M. Melhado; Tore Frängsmyr, editors. Enlightenment Science in the Romantic Era. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Includes information on Jöns Jakob Berzelius.
Carol L. Moberg, editor. The Beckman Symposium on Biomedical Instrumentation. Fullerton, Calif.: Beckman Instruments, 1986.
George David Smith. From Monopoly to Competition: The Transformations of Alcoa, 1888–1986. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Harrison Stephens. Golden Past, Golden Future: The First Fifty Years of Beckman Instruments, Inc. Claremont, Calif.: Claremont University Press, 1985.
John T. Stock; Mary Virginia Orna, editors. Electrochemistry Past and Present. Washington, D.C.: American Chemical Society, 1989.
Raymond Szymanowitz. Edward Goodrich Acheson. New York: Vantage Press, 1971.
Martha Moore Trescott. The Rise of the American Electrochemicals Industry, 1880–1910. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1981.
Don Whitehead. The Dow Story: The History of the Dow Chemical Company. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968.
L. Pearce Williams. Michael Faraday. New York: Da Capo, 1965.
The Path to the Periodic Table
John Bradley. Before and after Cannizzaro: A Philosophical Commentary on the Development of the Atomic and Molecular Theories. North Humberside, England: J. Bradley, 1992.
Sheldon Jerome Kopperl. "The Scientific Work of Theodore William Richards," Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1970.
Mario A. Morselli. Amedeo Avogadro: A Scientific Biography. Boston: D. Reidel, 1984. Distributed by Kluwer Academic Publishers.
R. E. Oesper. "Robert Wilhelm Bunsen." Journal of Chemical Education 4 (1927), 431–439.
Elizabeth C. Patterson. John Dalton and the Atomic Theory. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1970.
Alan J. Rocke. Chemical Atomism in the Nineteenth Century. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1982.
Arnold Thackray. John Dalton: Critical Assessments of His Life and Science. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972.
Morris William Travers. A Life of Sir William Ramsay. London: E. Arnold, 1956.
Jan W. van Spronsen. The Periodic System of Chemical Elements: A History of the First Hundred Years. New York: Elsevier, 1969.
Alexander Vucinich. "Mendeleev's Views on Science and Society." Isis 58 (1967), 342–351.
Atomic and Nuclear Structure
T. E. Allibone. Rutherford: The Father of Nuclear Energy. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1973.
Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent. "Star Scientists in a Nobelist Family: Iréne and Frèdèric Joliot-Curie." In Creative Couples in the Sciences, edited by H. M. Pycior, N. G. Slack, and P. G. Abir-Am. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1996.
Ernst Berninger. Otto Hahn. Bonn: Inter Nationes, 1970.
Deborah Crawford. Lise Meitner: Atomic Pioneer. New York: Crown Publishers, 1969.
Eve Curie. Madame Curie: A Biography. Translated by Vincent Sheean. Reprinted, with a foreword by C. Stewart Gillmor. Norwalk, Conn.: Easton Press, 1989.
Otto Hahn. My Life: The Autobiography of a Scientist. Translated by Ernst Kaiser and Eithne Wilkins. New York: Herder and Herder, 1970.
Naomi Pasachoff. Marie Curie and the Science of Radioactivity. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Rosalind Pflaum. Grand Obsession: Madame Curie and Her World. New York: Doubleday, 1989.
Susan Quinn. Marie Curie: A Life. Reading, Mass.: Addison Wesley Longman, 1995.
Glenn T. Seaborg. A Chemist in the White House: From the Manhattan Project to the End of the Cold War. Washington, D.C.: American Chemical Society, 1996.
———. The Plutonium Story: Journals of Professor Glenn T. Seaborg, 1939–1946. Columbus, Ohio: Battelle Press, 1994.
Glenn T. Seaborg, with Benjamin S. Loeb. The Atomic Energy Commission under Nixon: Adjusting to Troubled Times. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993.
———. Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Test Ban. Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1981.
———. Stemming the Tide: Arms Control in the Johnson Years. Lexington, Mass: Lexington Books, 1987.
Ruth Lewin Sime. Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics. Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996.
Sir G. P. Thomson. J. J. Thomson, Discoverer of the Electron. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1966.
———. J. J. Thomson and the Cavendish Laboratory in His Day. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1965.
David Wilson. Rutherford, Simple Genius. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1983.
Chemical Synthesis, Structure, and Bonding
Theodor Benfey. From Vital Force to Structural Formulas. Philadelphia: Chemical Heritage Foundation, 1992 (reprint of 1964 edition, Houghton Mifflin).
Theodor Benfey, editor. Kekulé Centennial. Washington, D.C.: American Chemical Society, 1966. On Kekulé's benzene theory and related topics.
William H. Brock. Justus von Liebig: The Chemical Gatekeeper. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Chemical Society of Great Britain. The Life and Work of Professor William Henry Perkin. London: Chemical Society, 1932.
Ted Goertzel; Ben Goertzel. Linus Pauling: A Life in Science and Politics. New York: Basic Books, 1995.
Thomas Hager. Force of Nature: The Life of Linus Pauling. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995.
In Honor of Gilbert N. Lewis on his 70th Birthday. Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1945.
David E. Newton. Linus Pauling: Scientist and Advocate. New York: Facts on File, 1994. Makers of Modern Science series.
Linus Pauling. Linus Pauling in His Own Words. Edited by Barbara M. Marinacci. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995.
Perkin Centenary, London: 100 Years of Synthetic Dyestuffs. Tetrahedron Supplement, 1. New York: Pergamon Press, 1958.
O. Bertrand Ramsay. Stereochemistry. Philadelphia: Heyden, 1981.
———, editor. Van't Hoff–Le Bel Centennial. Washington, D.C.: American Chemical Society, 1975. On stereochemistry.
Robert Scott Root-Bernstein. "The Ionists: Founding Physical Chemistry, 1872–1890." Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1980.
Albert Rosenfeld. The Quintessence of Irving Langmuir. Oxford/New York: Pergamon Press, 1966.
Margaret W. Rossiter. The Emergence of Agricultural Science: Justus Liebig and the Americans, 1840–1880. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1975.
John W. Servos. Physical Chemistry from Ostwald to Pauling: The Making of a Science in America. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990.
Virginia Veader Westervelt. Incredible Man of Science. New York: Messner, 1968. A biography of Irving Langmuir.
Howard J. White, Jr., editor. Proceedings of the Perkin Centennial, 1856–1956: Commemorating the Discovery of Aniline Dyes. Research Triangle Park, N.C.: American Association of Textile Chemists and Colorists, 1956.
John Wotiz, editor. The Kekulé Riddle: A Challenge for Chemists and Psychologists. Vienna, Ill.: Cache River Press, 1993.
Pharmaceuticals and the Path to Biomolecules
Ernst Baumler. Paul Ehrlich: Scientist for Life. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1984.
G. M. Caroe. William Henry Bragg, 1862–1942: Man and Scientist. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1978.
Francis H. Crick. What Mad Pursuit: A Personal View of Scientific Discovery. New York: Basic Books, 1988.
Paul De Kruif. Microbe Hunters. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1927. Reprinted with new introduction, San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1996.
Carl Djerassi. The Pill, Pygmy Chimps, and Degas' Horse. New York: Basic Books, 1992.
———. Steroids Made It Possible. Profiles, Pathways, and Dreams, series editor Jeffrey I. Seeman. Washington, D.C.: American Chemical Society, 1990.
Guy Dodson, Jenny P. Glusker, and David Sayre, editors. Structural Studies on Molecules of Biological Interest: A Volume in Honor of Dorothy Hodgkin. Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1981.
Henry Lowood, compiler. William Henry Bragg and William Lawrence Bragg: A Bibliography of their Non-Technical Writings. Berkeley: University of California, Office for the History of Science and Technology, 1978.
Martha Marquardt. Paul Ehrlich. New York: Schuman, 1951.
Robert Olby. The Path to the Double Helix: The Discovery of DNA. New York: Dover, 1994. Introduction by Francis Crick.
Anne Sayre. Rosalind Franklin and DNA. New York: W. W. Norton, 1978.
James D. Watson. The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA. New York: W. W. Norton, 1980.
M. Weatherall. In Search of a Cure: A History of Pharmaceutical Discovery. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.
Petroleum and Petrochemicals
American Chemical Society. A National Historic Chemical Landmark: The Houdry Process for the Catalytic Conversion of Crude Petroleum to High-Octane Gasoline. April 13, 1996. Booklet commemorating the designation of the Houdry process as a National Historic Chemical Landmark; available from the American Chemical Society.
C. G. Moseley. "Eugene Houdry, Catalytic Cracking, and World War II Aviation Gasoline." Journal of Chemical Education 61 (1984), 655–656.
Peter H. Spitz. Petrochemicals: The Rise of an Industry. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1988.
———. The Chemical Industry at the Millennium. Philadelphia: Chemical Heritage Foundation, 2003.
Plastics and Other Polymers
Stephen Fenichell. Plastic: The Making of a Synthetic Century. New York: Harper-Business, 1996.
Matthew Hermes. Enough for One Lifetime: Wallace Carothers, Inventor of Nylon. Washington, D.C.: American Chemical Society and Chemical Heritage Foundation, 1996.
G. B. Kauffman. "Wallace Hume Carothers and Nylon, the First Completely Synthetic Fiber." Journal of Chemical Education 65 (1988), 803–808.
Samuel P. Massie. "Behind 'Number, Please': The Story of W. Lincoln Hawkins." Chemistry 44 (16 Oct. 1971), 16.
———. "Henry Aaron Hill: The Second Mile." Chemistry 44 (11 Jan. 1971), 11.
Jeffrey L. Meikle. American Plastic: A Cultural History. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1995.
Herbert Morawetz. Polymers: The Origins and Growth of a Science. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1985.
Peter Morris. Polymer Pioneers: A Popular History of the Science and Technology of Large Molecules. Philadelphia: Chemical Heritage Foundation, 1986. Revised, 1990.
S. T. Mossman; Peter J. T. Morris, editors. The Development of Plastics. Cambridge: Royal Society of Chemistry, 1994.
Bernard E. Schaar. "Chance Favors the Prepared Mind. XII: Origins of the Plastics Industry." Chemistry 40 (19 Nov. 1967), 19–20. A biographical sketch of Baekeland.
Raymond B. Seymour; Roger S. Porter, editors. Manmade Fibers: Their Origin and Development. New York: Elsevier Applied Science, 1993.
Chemical Engineering: Chemistry Scales Up for Industry
A Dollar to a Doughnut: Doc Lewis, as Remembered by his Former Students. New York: American Institute of Chemical Engineers, circa 1950.
Clark K. Colton. Advances in Chemical Engineering: Research and Education. New York: Academic Press, 1991.
William F. Furter, editor. A Century of Chemical Engineering. New York: Plenum Press, 1982.
———, editor. History of Chemical Engineering. Washington, D.C.: American Chemical Society, 1980.
E. J. Kahn. The Problem-Solvers: A History of Arthur D. Little, Inc. Boston: Little, Brown, 1986.
Ralph Landau. Uncaging Animal Spirits: Essays on Engineering, Entrepreneurship, and Economics. Edited by Martha Gottron. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1994.
Arthur D. Little. The Handwriting on the Wall: A Chemist's Interpretation. Boston: Little, Brown, 1928.
Nicholas A. Peppas, editor. One Hundred Years of Chemical Engineering. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1989.
Terry S. Reynolds. 75 Years of Progress: A History of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, 1903–1983. J. Charles Forman, Larry Resen, editors. New York: The Institute, 1983.
Human and Natural Environmental Concerns
Frank Cameron. Cottrell: Samaritan of Science. Tucson: Research Corporation, 1993 (reprinted from 1952 edition).
Rachel Carson. Silent Spring. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962. Reprinted with an introduction by Al Gore, 1994.
Robert Clarke. Ellen Swallow: The Woman Who Founded Ecology. Chicago: Follett, 1973.
Esther M. Douty. America's First Woman Chemist: Ellen Richards. New York: Messner, 1961.
Alice Hamilton. Exploring the Dangerous Trades: The Autobiography of Alice Hamilton. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1985 (reprint of 1943 edition, Little, Brown).
Linda J. Lear. Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature. New York: Henry Holt, 1997.
Barbara Sicherman. Alice Hamilton: A Life in Letters. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984.
Eve Stwetka. Rachel Carson. New York: Franklin Watts, 1991.
Collected Biographies
American Men and Women of Science. New Providence, N.J.: R. R. Bowker, 1994 and earlier editions. Catalog of prominent living scientists.
Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, 1877–. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1931.
Mary Ellen Bowden; John Kenly Smith. American Chemical Enterprise. Philadelphia: Chemical Heritage Foundation, 1994.
Dictionary of Scientific Biography. New York: Scribners, 1970–1990.
Eduard Farber, editor. Great Chemists. New York: Interscience Publishers, 1961.
Louise S. Grinstein; Rose K. Rose; Miriam H. Rafailovich, editors. Women in Chemistry and Physics: A Bibliographic Sourcebook. Westport, Conn./London: Greenwood Press, 1993.
Caroline L. Herzberg. Women Scientists from Antiquity to the Present: An Index. West Cornwall, Conn.: Locust Hill Press, 1986.
Laylin K. James, editor. Nobel Laureates in Chemistry, 1901–1992. Washington, D.C.: American Chemical Society; Philadelphia: Chemical Heritage Foundation, 1993.
G. Kass-Simon; Patricia Farnes, editors. Women of Science: Righting the Record. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990.
James H. Kessler et al. Distinguished African-American Scientists of the Twentieth Century. Phoenix: Oryx Press, 1996.
Sharon McGrayne. Nobel Prize Women in Science: Their Lives, Struggles, and Momentous Discoveries. New York: Carol Publishing, 1993.
Wyndham D. Miles, editor. American Chemists and Chemical Engineers. Washington, D.C.: American Chemical Society, 1976.
Wyndham D. Miles; Robert F. Gould, editors. American Chemists and Chemical Engineers, Vol. 2. Guilford, Conn.: Gould Books, 1994.
Marilyn B. Ogilvie. Women in Science: Antiquity through the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1986.
Roy Porter, consulting editor. The Biographical Dictionary of Scientists. Second edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
Marelene and Geoffrey Rayner-Canham. Women in Science. Washington, D.C.: American Chemical Society; Philadelphia: Chemical Heritage Foundation, 1997.
Vivian Ovelton Sammons. Blacks in Science and Medicine. New York/London: Hemisphere Publishing, 1990.
General Histories and Overviews
Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent; Isabelle Stengers. A History of Chemistry. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997.
William H. Brock. The Norton History of Chemistry. New York: W. W. Norton, 1993.
Cathy Cobb; Harold Goldwhite. Creations of Fire: Chemistry's Lively History from Alchemy to the Atomic Age. New York: Plenum, 1995.
John Hudson. The History of Chemistry. New York: Chapman & Hall, 1992.
Aaron Ihde. The Development of Modern Chemistry. Rev. ed. New York: Dover, 1984 (First edition, 1964, Harper & Row).
David Knight. Ideas in Chemistry: A History of the Science. New Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers University Press, 1992.
Mary Jo Nye. Before Big Science: The Pursuit of Modern Chemistry and Physics, 1800–1940. New York: Twayne Publishers (Simon & Schuster MacMillan), 1996.
Mary E. Weeks; Henry M. Leicester. The Discovery of the Elements. Seventh edition. Easton, Pa.: Journal of Chemical Education Press, 1968.
Oral Histories
All the following oral histories are on deposit at the Othmer Library of Chemical History at the Chemical Heritage Foundation. To view the abstract, table of contents, and other details of the interview, click on the person’s name. Those with limited access are so noted. For more information about the oral histories listed below, contact oralhistory@chemheritage.org.
Arnold O. Beckman. Oral history interview by Jeffrey L. Sturchio and Arnold Thackray, 23 April 1985.
Arnold O. Beckman. Oral history interview by Jeffrey L. Sturchio and Arnold Thackray, 23 July 1985.
Arnold O. Beckman. Oral history interview by Arnold Thackray, 24 November 1989. (Limited access)
Arnold O. Beckman. Oral history interview by Arnold Thackray, 18 June 1991. (Limited access)
Carl Djerassi. Oral history interview by Jeffrey L. Sturchio and Arnold Thackray, 31 July 1985. (Limited access)
John E. Franz. Oral history interview by James J. Bohning, 29 November 1994. (Limited access)
N. B. Hannay. Oral history interview by James J. Bohning, 9 March 1995.
N. B. Hannay. Oral history interview by James J. Bohning, 28 December 1995.
Stephanie L. Kwolek. Oral history interview by Raymond C. Ferguson, 4 May 1986. (Limited access)
Stephanie L. Kwolek. Oral history interview by Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, 21 March 1998.
Ralph Landau. Oral history interview by James J. Bohning, 18 December 1990. (Limited access)
Marinus Los. Oral history interview by James J. Bohning and Bernadette R. McNulty, 17 January 1995.