N e w S l e t t e r o f t h e C h e m i C A l h e r i t A g e f o u N d A t i o N

CHF

No. 15 | Spring 2014

Alchemy in Düsseldorf

The largest loan of artwork in

CHF’s history heads to Europe

No. 15 | Spring 2014

Transmutations is a newsletter published three times per year for supporters of CHF.

Comments or questions about this issue?Please contactDavid Haldeman, Communications Coordinator, dhaldeman@chemheritage.org

For information on supporting CHF please contactDenise Creedon, Vice President for Institutional Advancement, dcreedon@chemheritage.org

Chemical Heritage FoundationLiBrAry • MuSeuM • CenTer For SCHoLArS

315 Chestnut StreetPhiladelphia, PA 19106-2702Phone: 215.925.2222Fax: 215.925.1954chemheritage.org

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DeSiGn: WFGD Studio

[on THe CoVer] MAin iMAGe: Thomas Wijck, The Alche-mist in His Studio. Photo by Gregory Tobias. Lower LeFT: Richard Holmes lectures at CHF on his book Falling Upwards. Lower riGHT: Audience at Holmes lecture. Photo by Conrad Erb.

With this issue of Transmutations we look back on fiscal year 2013 and forward to CHF’s future. On January 24, 2014, CHF’s board of directors unanimously approved a new strategic plan, which highlights the crucial points of an important transition period. Building on more than 30 years of tremendous growth and great success, we aim now to further increase our impact and expand the reach of our activities.

To increase our impact, in summer and fall 2014 we will set in motion three major endeavors based on the strategic plan: we will expand our activities in Eu-rope and Asia while also intensifying our efforts in key areas of the United States; begin digitizing an important slice of our collections; and create a research group on the history of material culture and innovation.

To expand our reach we will cover the sciences and technologies of matter and materials and their effect on the modern world, in territory ranging from the physical sciences and industries, through the chemical sciences and engineering, to the life sciences and technologies. This expansion will allow us to keep pace with the fields we study.

Disciplinary specialties and research trends come and go. But CHF’s pur-pose—highlighting the impact of science and technology on society—stays with us through history. We will continue to collect, study, and communicate the human stories of the fields we cover, concentrating on such themes as material culture and innovation, instrumentation, health and disease, international trade and regu-lation, and scientific communities.

As we widen the lens through which we view the chemical world, we invite you to work with us during this transition. Please explore the full plan at chemheritage .org/StrategicPlan and send us your feedback, your ideas, and your support.

Sincerely,

Laurie Landeau

Chair, Board of Directors

Carsten Reinhardt

President and CEO

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P.S. We’re always searching for more effective ways to communicate with our support-

ers. If you haven’t already, we encourage you to join our e-mail list at chemheritage.

org/SignUp. You’ll receive our new e-newsletter, along with invitations to CHF events

in your area, including those promoted exclusively through e-mail.

cover story

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Carsten Reinhardt

President and CEO

amous paintings are seasoned travelers. They journey from the artist’s studio to numerous exhibitions, pri-vate collections, and conservation facilities, crisscrossing

oceans and continents on planes and trains and in automo-biles. In the case of CHF’s Eddleman and Fisher Collections, most paintings have journeyed for centuries. Several even survived a torpedo attack on their way to the United States from England in World War II.

In March 2014 six of CHF’s most important paintings from the collections, along with a manuscript by Sir Isaac Newton, will undertake the next leg of their world travels. Meticulously packed in a 300-pound crate, the paintings will arrive in Düsseldorf, Germany, after being followed every step of the 4,000-mile trek by CHF staff and outside agents.

“This is the largest loan in CHF’s history,” said Amanda Shields, curator of fine art at CHF. “These really are the gems of our collection.”

The paintings will be part of Museum Kunstpalast’s exhibit Art and Alchemy: The Mystery of Transformation, on view from April 4 through August 10. The exhibit features alchemical works from antiquity to the present, and CHF’s pieces will hang alongside works by Rembrandt, Peter Paul Rubens, Max Ernst, and more than 200 others. The exhibit is based on research conducted by experts both at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin and at CHF.

“It’s just wonderful to see our collection hanging in a space with other collections,” said Shields. “To be in the presence of works by famous artists like Rembrandt, to have our works visible in a new, much broader way—you don’t get that opportunity every day.”

It was Chester G. Fisher and Roy Eddleman who gathered from around the world what would eventually become CHF’s alchemical art collection, bringing these works together in the belief that art was vital to our understanding and appre-ciation of science, and that in particular this alchemical art represented the works of the chemical enterprise.

Take a look at the bottom of a number of prints of famous alchemical works made by the Fisher Scientific Company, and you’ll see, in small type, the words “Published by Fisher Scientific In the Interest of Science.” It’s a testament to how

[LeFT] Two art handlers install Hendrick Heerschop’s The Alchemist’s Experiment Takes Fire in the gallery. [ABoVe] After arriving in Düsseldorf, Amanda Shields and a paintings conservator from the Museum Kunstpalast check the condition of the art.

Alchemy in DüsseldorfIn our largest loan ever, treasures from CHF ’s

alchemical art collection are on display in Germany

Chester G. Fisher, the founder of the company that has sold laboratory supplies and equipment since the 1920s, viewed art as important to science. He began collecting alchemical works in the 1920s until his death in 1965, and put works from his collections in company publications. He even sold prints of alchemical art in the Fisher catalog, right alongside the beakers and flasks, to laboratory researchers to provide them with a sense of the origins of their professions.

“My father thought that the laboratory scientist was not given enough recognition,” said Fisher’s son James in the book Transmutations: Alchemy in Art, “and this was a way to show the heritage and to honor people in laboratories, those behind the scenes who make so many other things possible.”

As a young man in junior high, Roy Eddleman began receiving the Fisher-owned Eimer and Amend laboratory supplies catalog, which had prints for sale of alchemical paintings from Fisher’s collection. Fascinated, Eddleman ordered numerous prints, but he would go on to become so successful as the founder and CEO of Spectrum Laboratories (and inventor of the wonderfully named beaker-flask combo, the “Fleaker”) that he could collect the real thing.

“People need to realize that alchemy was not simply quackery but includes real science,” Eddleman said in Transmutations.

Eddleman began collecting alchemical art in the late 1960s, in many ways picking up where Fisher had left off. It was fitting then that when Fisher Scientific International and the Fisher family generously donated the collection to CHF, Eddleman saw an opportunity to have both collections in one place—a powerful way to protect and share the art that affected him as a young man. In total, 90 paintings and 250 engravings and drawings are contained within the Eddleman and Fisher Collections.

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E. N. (Ned) Brandt was company historian of The Dow Chemical Company and a major figure in Dow’s public-relations activities for more than three decades. In this excerpt from his oral history Brandt describes the origins of Dow’s history function and the Dow archives, which he helped develop after the Dow board passed a resolu-tion in October 1973 that the company would keep no historical records.

turned out to be just a terrific archives. It happened rather oddly, but I owe a great deal to the cooperation and finan-cial support of the Dow Foundation in being able to do this.”

To support CHF’s oral-history program, please contact Richard Ulrych at 215.873.8286 or rulrych@chemheritage.org.

Ned Brandt

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fellow in focus

Peer review has become so inseparable from claims of scientific truth that we assume it has been vital to science since the beginning. Like electricity, peer re-view seems like a fundamental way the universe works: a force that has always been with us, waiting to be harnessed and utilized for the benefit of humanity. Even a somewhat critical 2011 report on the ef-fectiveness of peer review commissioned by the British House of Commons stated that the process "has always been regarded as crucial to the reputation and reliability of scientific research.”

But Alex Csiszar, assistant professor in the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University and a John C. Haas

Fellow at CHF, will tell you that “always been” has not always been. In fact peer review in its current form didn’t become widespread until the 1960s.

“[Peer review] is one of those institutions where the mo-ment it was invented, it generated its own history. All of a sudden it came to feel like a necessary aspect of how science works, even if it had never really worked that way. Many of the procedures we associate with peer review were invented by scientific societies in the 19th century, but most journals did not adopt them until much, much later.”

Understanding the origins of the scientific review process,

Alex Csiszar

Alex Csiszar.

Speaking of Chemistry

particularly in early-19th-century Britain, is a focus of Csiszar’s research. This was the era when scientific journals rose in im-portance, and publishing one’s research in periodicals became linked to scientific achievement. As part of that rise, “referees” of scientific papers became increasingly important, but con-trary to how we consider their role today, the original idea behind the referee had less to do with vetting scientific truth claims and more to do with improving the public standing of science within the changing political landscape.

These origins figure prominently in Csiszar’s upcoming book Broken Pieces of Fact about the rise of the scientific jour-nal in Britain and France. Csiszar has come to CHF to do re-search for the book, and while here he has studied several rare books and periodicals from the early 19th century, as well as the archives of the Institute for Scientific Information and its founder, Eugene Garfield. He also delivered CHF’s Rohm and Haas Fellow in Focus lecture in April.

“I want to make clear that publishing practices, journals, refereeing practices, ways in which scientists claim property rights in an idea—all of these things have changed far more over time than we usually realize,” said Csiszar.

More widely, Csiszar wants us to “have a conversation about what it means to produce consensus, about the nature of expertise, and about how the scientific process actually works. Then we’re all in a better position to engage in conver-sations on difficult questions that span science and politics. This has got to be more productive than simply telling people, ‘here’s what you need to believe.’”

Ned Brandt.

Peer revIew seems lIke It HAs AlwAys been An ImPortAnt PArt oF sCIenCe. but HIstory sAys otHerwIse.

“It HAPPeneD rAtHer oDDly”

came up because it was being used by the local artists as a place for their artis-tic activities. . . . It was rented to them as a group by Alden Dow for a dollar a year. After the Midland Center for the Arts opened, they began to drift away from here and to move over to the Cen-ter for the Arts. . . .

“[The Post Street School] gradually became disused, and so we got the idea of using it for the archives. . . . We began active work on that in early 1986 . . . and moved in here September 1987. It’s

“In 1973 I was protesting, jumping up and down and saying, ‘That’s awful. We’re throwing out our history. We’re throwing out the baby with the bath water.’ One of the reasons I went to work with Herb Dow a few years later was that I worked with Herb on rescuing some of these historical records. . . .

“When we decided that we really needed an official archives, one of the possibilities that came up was . . . this old Post Street School, which also is the property of the Dow Foundation. It

3

The constant presence of science and technology in our everyday lives can breed complacency. When a complex technology like the smartphone is as ubiquitous as the clouds in the sky, it’s easy to take it for granted, forgetting that it is the work of human hands, human ingenuity, and hundreds of thousands of hours of intellectual and physical labor. And further, the labor that goes into new technologies remains largely hidden from public view. While the public knows the names of compa-nies like Gore-Tex and Intel, the human element largely remains unknown.

It has been said that human beings are wired for story, but words like semi-conductor and polytetrafluoroethylene do not seem like the start of an interest-ing tale. Yet knowing the stories behind these technologies—and appreciating their impact—can go a long way toward making a more scientifically literate populace and building a greater appreciation for technology’s impact. In particular it’s the human stories, like the thrill of discovery, and the strug-gles and triumphs that went into realizing these technologies, that can make science more relatable, understandable, and inspiring to those beyond the laboratory walls.

CHF’s new film series Scientists You Must Know tells the stories behind four exceptional, world-changing scientists: Arnold O. Beckman, leader of the “instrumentation revolu-tion” in the 20th century; Gordon Moore, semiconductor pio-neer and cofounder of Intel; George Rosenkranz, inventor of the oral contraceptive; and Robert Gore, inventor of Gore-Tex. From their early childhoods to their struggles and triumphs

Scientists You Must Knowin adulthood, these are the stories behind people whose pursuit of new technologies has changed all our lives.

The series consists of four 15-min-ute videos, each focused on one innovator. The Gordon Moore seg-ment has been completed and is avail-able for viewing at chemheritage.org /GordonMoore. The segments on Rosenkranz, Beckman, and Gore will be available soon. The segments will then be combined and reedited into an hour-long special to be broadcast on PBS stations across the country in November 2014. The series builds on the success of CHF’s Women in Chem-istry film series, which was also melded into a one-hour special, and is being currently broadcast on PBS stations in over 50 major media markets.

Through Scientists You Must Know, CHF hopes to create fascinating

and inspiring demonstrations of the important ways in which scientists can positively affect society. These sto-ries can resonate not only with scientists but with adults and younger audiences. Especially for young people who need encouragement to explore the sciences, the series re-veals the often-overlooked fact that groundbreaking discov-eries were made by people who started with little else but curiosity. Though the impacts of these scientists would change the world, their stories began just like everyone else’s: with a beginning.

We’d love to discuss how CHF can direct your philanthropic support to projects like Scientists You Must Know. Please contact Denise Creedon at 215.873.8266 or dcreedon@chemheritage.org.

Program feature

“The Eddleman and Fisher Collec-tions are great examples of the inter-play of science and art,” said Carsten Reinhardt, CHF’s president and CEO, “and at the same time evoke the fan-tasy image of alchemy that has contin-ued to last in the public imagination.”

But it wasn’t simply a matter of gathering these works in one place. CHF approached Johns Hopkins hu-manities professor Lawrence Principe, art historian Lloyd DeWitt, and cura-tor Marge Gapp to research the works, which complemented the research led by Sven Dupres at the Max Planck

Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. Their research formed the basis for the Museum Kunspalast exhibit. Further, the Fisher Family Fund of the Pittsburgh Foundation stepped forward to support conservation work on many of the paintings.

After centuries of world travel, these important paintings are together at the sole institution in the world that promotes an understanding of their specific history. But for many of the works, their world travels continue.

“This is a wild show,” said Dedo Von Kerssenbrock-Krosigk, curator of

Art and Alchemy at Museum Kunstpalast, “comprising, among others, Egyptian papyri, Renaissance book illumination, paintings from Cranach to Rubens, a ‘Kunst- und Wunderkammer’ with natural and artificial objects, as well as modern and contemporary art. The Chemical Heritage Foundation is the most generous lender to our show. All of their works are crucial to the exhibit; they are in formidable condition and prominently displayed, and will hope-fully engage our visitors’ interest in their distinguished lender from across the Atlantic.”

Alchemy Continued from page 1

Instrumentation pioneer Arnold Beckman, seen here with his wife Mabel, is one of the “Scientists You Must Know.” Photo courtesy of the Beckman family.

Nancy Chang

icons of Chf

4

It was supposed to be just airplane reading.Nancy Chang had brought along a copy of James Watson’s

The Double Helix—a book about the building blocks of life—on a flight to the United States where she was to start graduate studies in chemistry. However, she found Watson’s book so affecting, “so beautifully written,” that she gave up chemistry to study biology.

At Harvard University, where she joined her husband (Tse-Wen Chang), Nancy Chang worked relentlessly to learn a new field and overcome a language barrier. She woke up early and went to sleep late and never took a vacation. The only breaks she had were the few minutes on weekends when she and Tse-Wen went to the farmer’s market to get a slice of pizza. “That was our happy time,” she said.

Upon getting her PhD she applied her focus and determi-nation to every aspect of her career. She rose through the ranks of Centocor, leading the first team to define and sequence the HIV genome structure. Then she and Tse-Wen joined the fac-ulty of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.

It was there that their lives changed radically. Both of them had always suffered terrible allergies that triggered asthma attacks. One night, unable to sleep because of an allergy attack, Tse-Wen had a eureka moment. He conceived of a way to treat allergies by blocking immunoglobulin E. This insight became the cornerstone of Tanox—a small biotechnology company that Nancy and Tse-Wen started together while they were at Baylor.

Quitting her professorship to lead Tanox, Nancy oversaw the company’s growth into a multimillion-dollar corpora-tion, creating therapies for HIV/AIDS, Crohn’s disease, aller-gies, and other maladies. The company’s IPO in 2000 was the

biggest ever for a biotech company, and in 2007 the firm was sold to biotech giant Genentech for $919 million.

Conscious of the human benefits of inno-vation, Nancy now works to help others develop the therapies of tomorrow. She serves on the boards of numerous fledgling com-panies and also finds time to do philanthropic work in community health-care education projects.

She has also been helping CHF with its pro-gramming: advising us on our efforts to record and make known the history of HIV/AIDS therapies; sharing her life story as part of CHF’s film series Women in Chemistry; participating in CHF’s 2013 T. T. Chao Symposium, which focused on genomic medicine; as well as participating in this year’s Chao Symposium, which will focus on HIV/AIDS.

Recipient of the 2012 Biotechnology Heritage Award, an award jointly presented by CHF and the Biotechnology In-dustry Organization, Nancy currently is president of Apex Enterprises, an investment company with a major focus on the life sciences.

Nancy Chang.

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GYour own chemistry lab

WITHOuT THe CLeAN-up

Chf is excited to introduce ChemCrafter, a new app

that lets you perform virtual chemistry experiments,

build your own lab, and craft gases, liquids, and solids.

Along the way you’ll gain points to unlock better equipment,

a wider variety of chemicals, and new challenges.

ChemCrafter is available

for iPad.

download at the app store.

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recent events

[1] Digital artist Andrea polli (center), creator of the art installation Particle Falls, stands with Jody Roberts; peggy Goldfarb, senior vice president at u.S. Trust; Thomas C. Woodward, market president for Bank of America—pennsyl-vania; and Carsten Reinhardt.

[2] Robert Fox, emeritus professor of the history of science at Oxford university and a Cain Distinguished Fellow, de-livered a Fellow in Focus lecture in November titled map-ping the universe of knowledge: Internationalism and national Interest in modern science.

[3] Fred Wilson, formerly of Rohm and Haas, stands by a former Rohm and Haas sign at the opening of the John C. Haas Archive of science and business.

[4] At the 2013 Artefacts Conference hosted at CHF, Rob-ert G. W. Anderson, vice chair of CHF’s Board of Directors and former director of the British Museum, shares a laugh with Odile Madden, research scientist at the Smithsonian Museum Conservation Institute.

[5] NpR science correspondent Joe palca gives a talk on communicating science to public audiences as part of the ullyot Public Affairs lecture.

[6] In October, Bassam Shakhashiri delivered the Heinz Heinemann lecture, titled the rights and responsibilities of Freedom. Left to right: Robert purdy, Roslyn Appell, Sue Heinemann, Barbara Tenenbaum, and Bassam Shakhashiri.

dynamic engagement

[1] [2]

[3] [4]

[5] [6]

On a December night, under the glowing lamps of the Oth-mer Library of Chemical History, dozens of newly acquired rare books and artifacts were dis-played and made available for adoption. The evening began with a talk by noted humanities scholar Lawrence Principe, and throughout the event CHF staff was on hand to describe the items and interpret their his-tories. CHF acknowledges the National Endowment for the Humanities for its significant support of this and other activi-ties through a challenge grant for the establishment of a per-manent acquisitions fund.

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Visit chemheritage.org

for further information and

registration details.

Follow CHF on

Events

Joseph Priestley Society Luncheon Speaker: K’Lynne Johnson, May 8

Heritage Day With presentations of the Othmer Gold Medal to Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw; the Richard J. Bolte Sr. Award for Supporting Industries to Atsushi Horiba; and the AIC Gold Medal to Ronald Breslow

May 15

The Synthesis Lecture Speaker: Angela N. H. Creager

May 29

First Friday at CHF

June 6

Biotechnology Heritage Award Honoree: Robert Langer

June 23

First Friday at CHF

July 4

Suited for Space Opens May 19

Making Modernity Ongoing

The Whole of Nature and the Mirror of Art: Images of Alchemy

Ongoing

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315 Chestnut StreetPhiladelphia, PA 19106-2702chemheritage.org

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Exhibits

A 19th-century chemistry cabinet by John J. Griffin and Sons. CHF Collections.

CHF fosters dialogue on science and

technology in society. CHF’s staff and

fellows study the past in order to un-

derstand the present and inform the

future. We focus on the sciences and

technologies of matter and materials

and their effect on our modern world,

in territory ranging from the physical

sciences and industries, through the

chemical sciences and engineering, to

the life sciences and technologies. We

collect, preserve, and exhibit histori-

cal artifacts. We engage communi-

ties of scientists and engineers. We

tell the stories of the people behind

breakthroughs and innovations.

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