Chemistry and the Chemical Industry in the 19th Century

Wilfred Vernon Farrar, Richard L. Hills

• Contents: Introduction; Obituary of W.V. Farrar, D.S.L. Cardwell; The Henrys of Manchester: Thomas Henry (1734-1816); Thomas Henry’s sons: Thomas, Peter and William; William Henry and John Dalton; William Henry: hydrocarbons and the gas industry: minor chemical papers; William Henry: contagion and cholera; the textbook; William Charles Henry: the magnesia factory; Victorian pure and applied science: Sir B.C. Brodie and his calculus of chemical operations; 19th-century speculations on the complexity of the chemical elements; Richard Laming and the coal gas industry, with his views on the structure of matter; Some early ventures in the fixation of atmospheric nitrogen; Andrew Ure, F.R.S., and the philosophy of manufactures; Robert Angus Smith, F.R.S., and ’sanitary science’; Synthetic dyes before 1860; Science and the German university system, 1790-1850; Edward Schunck F.R.S.: a pioneer of natural-product chemistry; Index.

’This book is a welcome addition to the Variorum Collected Studies Series and serves as a timely reminder of the great debt that we owe to a historian of chemistry who pioneered the study of regional themes and lesser events and individuals.’ Bulletin of the History of Chemistry, Vol. 22 ’Farrar’s work is a major contribution not only to the history of chemistry, but to history more generally.’ Canadian Journal of History, Vol. XXXIII ’This collection is an important one for historians of chemistry, and for historians of nineteenth-century society, especially in Britain.’ Annals of Science, Vol. 56