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A modest start

In September 1979, the Division of the History of Chemistry (HIST) of the American Chemical Öйú365betÖÐÎĹÙÍø (ACS) proposed creating a center focused on preserving and celebrating the history of chemistry. Other professional groups, including those for physicists and engineers, had established programs to capture and share their histories. HIST members concluded the time was right to create a center focused on collecting, cataloging, and sharing the important contributions of chemists â€� contributions that too often were overlooked and underappreciated.

This interest within ACS coincided with a parallel effort by Arnold Thackray, founder of the History and Sociology of Science Department at the University of Pennsylvania. Thackray wanted to build a history center on the foundation of the Edgar Fahs Smith Memorial Collection at Penn. Home to one of the first chemical plants built in the U.S., and a longtime hub for the U.S. chemical industry, Philadelphia was a natural choice for the location. Members of HIST joined forces with Thackray to persuade ACS and the university to support the new venture. Under Thackray’s leadership, the Center for History of Chemistry opened on the Penn campus in 1982. It was the world’s first organization devoted solely to the historical study of chemistry and related sciences and technologies. 

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Library and archives

The Institute’s Donald F. and Mildred Topp Othmer Library of Chemical History holds a wealth of resources. More than 160,000 volumes document the histories of chemistry, chemical engineering, and the life sciences. It was founded in 1988 when Donald and Mildred Topp Othmer announced a challenge grant for the creation of a library to preserve the history of the chemical sciences. This world-class collection contains more than 7,700 rare books and unique manuscripts dating from the 15th century onward. It includes one of the world’s most comprehensive collections of rare books related to the study of alchemy and early chemistry, as well as manuscripts written by Sir Isaac Newton.

The library’s archives department comprises collections of papers from many influential scientific organizations, such as the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, the Chemists� Club of New York City, and several ACS divisions, along with the corporate collections of such chemical giants as The Dow Chemical Company, Aldrich Chemical Company, and Rohm & Haas Company.

The archives also contain the personal papers of numerous Nobel laureates, including Alan MacDiarmid, who received a Nobel Prize in 2000 for finding that certain plastics could conduct electricity, and Paul Flory, a polymer chemist who received a Nobel Prize in 1974 for his work on macromolecules, which include DNA, RNA, and proteins, along with lipids and carbohydrates. Additionally, over 50,000 historical photographs and films in the archives document laboratories, people, and processes. Much of the archives� content is preserved and offered in digital formats, allowing students and scholars easy access to these valuable collections.

New materials are acquired every year. For example, archivists are actively collecting materials related to the life of Percy Lavon Julian, a Black research chemist and pioneer in the chemical synthesis of medicinal drugs from plants. In a 1956 letter in the archives, Julian writes to the president of ACS to critique the organization’s decision to hold a national meeting in the segregated South and for including in the promotional materials a list of “Hotels for Colored Persons.�

The papers of Georg and Max Bredig are another important acquisition. This collection, smuggled out of Nazi-occupied Germany, tells the story of noted father and son German Jewish chemists and their family’s struggle to live through the Holocaust. Thanks to a recent grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources, the entire correspondence has been digitized, transcribed, and translated into English. It is available in the Institute’s digital collections.

The many stories in this collection, and others that reveal how professional networks became lifelines to surviving war or exile, have led the Institute to focus on developing programming around the history of science and U.S. immigration.

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Beckman Center for the History of Chemistry

The Beckman Center is home to the Institute’s fellowship program, which hosts around 20 scholars in residence each year. The Center was named in 1987 in recognition of an Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation grant that was designed to expand the Center for History of Chemistry into a research institute. Today, researchers travel from all over the world to use the Othmer Library’s collections and take part in the Beckman Center’s vibrant scholarly community. The Center provides various research opportunities, including 12-month postdoctoral fellowships, nine-month dissertation-writing grants, four-month fellowships for established scholars, and one- to four-month fellowships for anyone whose independent research could benefit from using the Institute’s collections. The Center also offers two-year curatorial fellowships in which fellows are integrated as members of Institute staff to assist with storytelling projects.

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Center for Oral History

The Institute’s Center for Oral History has emerged as a national authority on oral history methodology. It houses a robust collection of more than 1,200 audio recordings of interviews with notable people, including Nobel laureates and National Medal of Science recipients, dating back to 1979.

Among the interviews in the collection, nearly 100 feature women, including Stephanie Kwolek. After earning her bachelor’s degree in chemistry at Carnegie Mellon University in 1946, she joined Dupont as a polymer chemist. Later in her career, she was tasked with finding fibers that could withstand extreme conditions. Through her research, Kwolek discovered that rodlike polyamides could, under certain conditions, line up to form liquid crystalline solutions. Her work involved synthesizing high-molecular weight aromatic polyamides, dissolving them in solvents, and spinning these solutions into fibers that were strong and rigid. The resulting fiber she created became known as Kevlar.

The Center also boasts a collection of interviews with scientists who served on the Presidential Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. One example is Shirley Mahaley Malcom, who grew up in the segregated South, attending an all-Black high school in Alabama. Despite her exceptional grades, she knew she would not be able to attend a university in Alabama. Consequently she enrolled at the University of Washington, Seattle, where she studied zoology. She later earned a Ph.D. at Pennsylvania State University. Malcom dedicated the majority of her career to the American Association for the Advancement of Science and served as a presidential advisor for Bill Clinton.

The Institute’s Center for Oral History also hosts popular week-long oral history training sessions in Philadelphia and at major universities around the U.S. The recent shift to virtual programming has resulted in a global audience of diverse attendees, including participants from Native American communities, China, Australia, and Germany.

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Landmark dedication and acknowledgments

Landmark dedication

The American Chemical Öйú365betÖÐÎĹÙÍø (ACS) honored the Science History Institute with the National Historic Chemical Landmark (NHCL) designation in a ceremony at the Institute on June 10, 2023. The commemorative plaque reads:

The Center for History of Chemistry opened on the University of Pennsylvania campus in 1982, with support from the university and the American Chemical Öйú365betÖÐÎĹÙÍø. The American Institute of Chemical Engineers became an additional sponsor in 1984. It was renamed the Chemical Heritage Foundation in 1992 and moved to its present site in 1996. After merging with the Life Sciences Foundation, it was renamed the Science History Institute in 2018, reflecting its broad interdisciplinary mission. The Institute’s Othmer Library of Chemical History, museum, oral history center, Beckman Center for the History of Chemistry, and digital offerings help scholars and the public understand the role of science and technology in shaping society’s past, present, and future.

Acknowledgments

Written by Michal Meyer and Michelle DiMeo.

The authors wish to thank contributors to and reviewers of this booklet, all of whom helped improve its content, especially members of the ACS NHCL Subcommittee.

The nomination for this Landmark designation was prepared by the Institute and the ACS History of Chemistry Division.

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