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Annales de chimie letters and documents
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Held at: University of Pennsylvania: Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts [Contact Us]3420 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6206
This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held at the University of Pennsylvania: Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts. Unless otherwise noted, the materials described below are physically available in their reading room, and not digitally available through the web.
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Annales de chimie is a scientific journal that was founded in Paris, France, in 1789 by Louis-Bernard Guyton de Morveau (1737-1816) 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.
Works cited:
Crosland, Maurice P. "Louis Bernard Guyton de Morveau: French Chemist and Educator." Encyclopedia Britannica. (accessed 2017 June 29).
Ihde, Aaron J. The Development of Modern Chemistry. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1984.
Physics Today, "Louis Bernard Guyton de Morveau." 2017 January 4 in Today in History (accessed 2017 June 19)
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.
Sold by Roger Gaskell Rare Books, 2016.
- Publisher
- University of Pennsylvania: Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts
- Finding Aid Author
- Kelin Baldridge
- Finding Aid Date
- 2017 June 29
- Access Restrictions
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This collection is open for research use.
- Use Restrictions
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Copyright restrictions may exist. For most library holdings, the Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania do not hold copyright. It is the responsibility of the requester to seek permission from the holder of the copyright to reproduce material from the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts.