A Guide to Archives and Manuscript Collections in the History of Chemistry and ChemicalTechnology by George D. Tselos; Colleen WickeyReview by: Sheldon HochheiserIsis, Vol. 79, No. 1 (Mar., 1988), pp. 131-132Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/234459 .

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BOOK REVIEWS-ISIS, 79: 1: 296 (1988) 131

the lack of a modern inventory and of a place where they could be organized and consulted. As far as I know, the last serious attempt to catalogue these papers was made by G. V. Schiaparelli (1835-1910), whose deep interest in the history of as- tronomy is witnessed by his many publica- tions in the field.

My own experience of doing research in the Brera archives in the early 1980s was both very exciting and rather sad. Through the courtesy of the former director, Aldo Kranjc, I was introduced into a medium- sized room completely filled, from floor to ceiling, with old folders, packages of docu- ments dating from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-twentieth century, celestial and terres- trial maps and globes, and volumes of manuscript papers, including the only ex- tant copy of Giuseppe Piazzi's original ob- servations. This was, in a word, a "treasure room" where one could expect to find any- thing. The excitement of finding so much "new" material was balanced, however, by the sadness of my feeling that, under the circumstances, something relevant to my research would almost certainly escape my attention, and by my further realization that, at the time, nothing was being done to preserve this precious material and make it available to scholars.

The initiative of Guido Tagliaferri, of the Sezione di Storia della Fisica dell'Istituto di Fisica Generale Applicata (University of Milan), and collaborators to undertake the work of reordering and cataloguing the ar- chives of the Brera Observatory is there- fore highly laudable and much needed.

This volume, Catalogo della corrispon- denza degli Astronomi di Brera, 1726- 1799, is apparently the first of a series intended to list all the correspondence pre- served in the Brera archives. The book contains a foreword by the authors, in- structions for users, the catalogue itself, in- dexes of the letter writers, the recipients, and the cities of posting, brief biographies of the correspondents, a bibliography, and an appendix that lists the folders from which the letters have been extracted.

The catalogue itself contains 1,333 en- tries, mainly letters to and from the "Brera astronomers": Boscovich, A. Cag- noli, F. Carlini, A. De Cesaris, L. La- grange, B. Oriani, F. Reggio. It also con- tains a number of letters between third parties, almost all of whom are somehow connected with the Brera Observatory.

The letters are arranged alphabetically

according to the name of the sender and, for each sender, by date. A synopsis of the content of each letter is provided. In their foreword the editors state that although the synopsis is "obviously a very subjective one . . . , the names of the persons cited in the letters have been inserted" as a first step toward analyzing the content of the letters. Unfortunately, not all the names have been inserted, as can be easily ascer- tained by consulting printed versions of the letters. Moreover, after their brief and clear instructions for using the catalogue, the ed- itors list seven works in which part of the correspondence has been published (p. 11). This list is apparently not an exhaustive one (I have right on my desk a volume of the Effemeridi Astronomiche di Milano per l'anno 1863, not included in the list, in which a few letters from the Brera archives are published), and its usefulness would have been greatly enhanced by the indica- tion of which letters are published where.

The brief biographies of the correspon- dents inserted at the end of the volume are useful for tracing the whereabouts of minor personages; however, the quantity of infor- mation provided strongly reflects the edi- tors' ideas about how well known each per- son is. It is otherwise very difficult to explain why, for example, Jerome de La- lande is granted only one word-"Astron- omer"-while Franz X. von Zach needs seven and a half lines.

A few misprints, usually easily detect- able by the careful reader, appear here and there, as is almost inevitable in works of this kind. However, I will conclude with a curiosity: page 248, no. 858, lists a letter by L. Lagrange to F. Cavalli (?), dated 01-29- 1766. The synopsis reads: "Father La- grange writes on thermometers, barome- ters, and on a hydrometric machine made by Father Angelo Secchi. Sketches." I must confess that I am puzzled!

GIORGIA FODERIA SERIO

George D. Tselos; Colleen Wickey (Com- pilers). A Guide to Archives and Manu- script Collections in the History of Chemis- try and Chemical Technology. (Center for History of Chemistry Publication, 7.) viii + 198 pp., illus., indexes. Philadelphia: Center for History of Chemistry, 1987. $7.50 (paper).

One healthy phenomenon that has ac- companied the maturation of the history of science as a field has been the proliferation

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132 BOOK REVIEWS-ISIS, 79: 1: 296 (1988)

of disciplinary history centers, along the lines pioneered by the Center for History of Physics. What is now the Beckman Center for the History of Chemistry, sponsor and publisher of this volume, is one of the more prominent of these groups. The volume under review is a sterling example of the type of activities these centers can under- take for the advancement of both their spe- cialties and the history of science in gen- eral.

Rather than an original collation, the guide is the product of combing various other broader guides (most notably the Na- tional Union Catalog of Manuscript Collec- tions) for relevant entries, although these are well supplemented by material obtained through direct requests for information from numerous repositories. The entries thus collected are organized into a well- indexed alphabetical list. But they are re- printed largely as received. This creates two problems: the guide is a jumble of dif- ferent typefaces; and, more important, the descriptions vary widely in level of detail and frequently contain much that describes parts of collections irrelevant to the history of chemistry, however broadly defined. Thus one must read through a long descrip- tion of the papers of the McReynolds fam- ily of Kentucky (guide entry M19) to dis- cover that the only possible connection this politically prominent family had to chemis- try is that the collection contains recipes for medicines and dyes, no doubt for the sorts of home preparations typical of most of the nineteenth century.

Still, there is a tremendous amount of valuable material, both familiar and unfa- miliar, gathered in one place for the first time. I, as no doubt will every other histo- rian of chemistry or chemical technology, found much that was previously unknown but of great interest. Here can be found the locations of the papers of American chem- ists both great (Roger Adams, Harold Urey, Leo Baekland, Irving Langmuir) and obscure (any number of chemistry profes- sors and chemical entrepreneurs); the rec- ords of chemical industry held outside the companies themselves, both prominent (the many groups of Du Pont company records at the Hagley Library) and unknown (local dyeworks, sugar refineries, and metal smelters); and other records too varied to classify (academic department collections, records of European chemists held in American repositories). The variety pro- duces a sense of wonder, but at times a

sense of puzzlement as well. Is there really only one carton of Gilbert Lewis's records extant? Why does one small collection of Thomas Edison papers in Ohio appear, but not the major collections in New Jersey? Are the records of dozens of obscure failed breweries relevant to the history of chemis- try and chemical technology, or, con- versely, would historians of brewing ever think to use this guide in their work?

As its title indicates, the volume is not just a guide to collections in chemistry, but in chemical technology as well. This might seem strange to scholars in other areas, but it is quite natural for chemistry; chemistry has always been closely related to its appli- cations, and in twentieth-century America, the milieu of the majority of the guide's en- tries, this has been particularly true. Aca- demic chemists train students for industrial careers, and much chemical research takes place in the industrial setting. With a few exceptions academic and other public chemists are the better known. One benefi- cial effect of this guide may be to focus the attention of historians on the private side, thereby leading to work that will enable us to understand better the role of chemistry in modern society. I suppose, though, that the benefit could be stated even more broadly. The history of chemistry has been a relatively neglected field within the his- tory of science in recent years. If this guide and other publications from the Beckman Center for the History of Chemistry serve to refocus even a small amount of addi- tional attention in the direction of chemis- try, then George Tselos and Colleen Wickey's efforts will have been well in- vested.

SHELDON HOCHHEISER

* Biographical Collections

Leo Beek. Dutch Pioneers of Science. 183 pp., illus., bibl., index. Assen/Maastricht: Van Gorcum, 1985. (Distributed in the U.S. and Canada by Longwood Publishing Group, Wolfeboro, N.H.) $65.

At a recent small international confer- ence in Paris several of the English dele- gates complained that the French were giv- ing their papers in their native language. This prompted the cri de coeur from a Dan- ish participant that no one ever heard his language at these gatherings. Certainly, the

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