Annales de chimie letters and documents, 1790-1809.

Format:

Other

Author/Creator:

Guyton de Morveau, Louis-Bernard, 1737-1816.

Contributor:

Edgar Fahs Smith Memorial Fund.

Language:

French

German

Italian

Subjects (All):

Annales de chimie.

Chemistry--Periodicals.

Chemistry.

Science.

Science--France--History--18th century.

France.

History.

Genre:

Manuscripts, French.

Correspondence.

Manuscripts (document genre)

Pamphlets.

Periodicals.

Penn Provenance:

Sold by Roger Gaskell Rare Books, 2016.

Physical Description:

1 box (.2 linear foot)

Place of Publication:

1790-1809.

Language Note:

Material in French, Italian, and German.

Biography/History:

Annales de chimie is a scientific journal that was founded in Paris, France, in 1789 by Louis-Bernard Guyton de Morveau and Antoine Lavoisier (1743-1794). In 1815, the journal became Annales de chimie et de physique and was published under that name for over one hundred years. In 1914, "the journal was split up into Annales de chimie and Annales de physique," (Ihde, page 273). Louis-Bernard Guyton de Morveau was a French chemist who was born in 1737 in Dijon, France. He was educated as a lawyer, but "became interested in chemistry and learned the subject through textbooks and a home laboratory," (Physics today). He worked closely with Antoine Lavoisier, known as the "founder of modern chemistry," and they, along with Antoine François de Fourcroy (1755-1809) and Claude Louis Berthollet (1748-1822), are generally considered "the earliest adherents of the new chemistry" (Ihde, page 75). In 1787, this group wrote Méthode de nomenclature chimique, devising a chemical nomenclature which adopted Latin and Greek words. According to Ihde, "in 1789, the group around Lavoisier founded the Annales de chimie as a medium for their studies, (page 273) and Guyton de Morveau, along with Lavoisier, served as a lead editor. As the French Revolution raged, Guyton de Morveau applied "science, particularly chemistry, to warfare," (Crosland). He was a member of the Paris Academy of Sciences, was a founding professor of the École Polytechnique (serving as director from 1798 to 1799 and from 1800 to 1804), and was the author of many works, including Eléments de chimie théorique et pratique and the chemistry section of Encylopédie methodique. Guyton de Morveau married Madame Picardet in 1798. She worked with him to translate scientific works. He died in Paris on January 2, 1816, at the age of 78.

Summary:

This collection contains letters, pamphlets and manuscripts relating to Louis-Bernard Guyton de Morveau and his work as a lead editor of the Annales de chimie. Documents include foreign language originals, copy texts, or the actual printer's copy. In every case, textual changes can be observed between the manuscript or printed copy texts and the journal appearances (which appear in this collection as photocopies). Throughout the collection, Guyton de Morveau's interest in developing a chemical nomenclature is apparent in that he frequently changed the chemical names in articles to new nomenclature when reprinting from offprints from other journals. This is particularly obvious in "Mémoire sur la phosphate calcaire," located in box 1, folder 1, illustrating the instability of a text which is, at first sight, the same in the two journals. Many of the documents in the collection, which date from 1790 to 1809, are annotated by Guyton de Morveau. Other pieces relate to the new chemistry, such as the letter from the first German chemist to adopt Lavoisier's chemistry, Sigismund Friedrich Hermbstädt, and a dispute between Lazzaro Spallanzani and Luigi Valentino Brugnatelli over the authorship of a letter on the new chemistry. Chemists of note included in the collection are Henri-Ignace Brechtel (1784-1856), Luigi Valentino Brugnatelli (1761-1818), Louis Donadei, Nocholas B. Halma (1755-1828), Sigismund Friedrich Hermbstädt (1760-1833), Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859), Bernard Germain Lacepdede (1756-1825), Bertrand Pelletier (1761-1797), Jeremias Benjamin Richter (1762-1807), Lazzaro Spallanzani (1729-1799), Johann Bartholomew Trommsdorff (1770-1837), Van der Moeven, Martin Van Marum (1750-1837), Jean-Baptiste Van Mons (1765-1842), and Alessandro Volta (1745-1827). There are also several documents relating to chemistry education, particularly at the Institut d'Erfurt, which was founded by Trommsdorff in 1798, the first pharmaceutical institute in Germany, training prospective pharmacists in botany, zoology, mineralogy, mathematics, and natural philosophy during its thirty-three years of existence. The collection is arranged chronologically.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Edgar Fahs Smith Memorial Fund.

OCLC:

992711658