Has chemistry become
the second invisible profession?

By Tom Davey

Portrait of Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier, a pioneer in chemistry, and his wife, Marie-Anne Pierrette Paulze, in their home as he sits recording results, surrounded by his balloon flasks and test tubes.

Around 1669, Hamburg alchemist Hennig Brand, accidentally discovered phosphorous in his own urine while trying to turn base materials into gold. While he failed in his quest scientifically, he nevertheless transmuted his findings into wealth. Calling his discovery cold light, for it left a luminous trail in the dark, he kept his process secret. Later he sold it to Krafft who created a sensation before the crowned heads of Europe wherever he exhibited it. Herr Brand had unwittingly taken the first step which led to the knowledge that P is an essential element for all life. He has been referred to as the first chemist as well as the first person known to have discovered an element.

But his phosphorous mirabilis languished as a mere curiosity for a hundred years until a J.F. Gahn made his startling discovery: phosphorous was an essential constituent of human and animal bones. Later a C.W. Scheele found that phosphorous could be produced from bone ash. But Brand's secret was so well kept, Robert Boyle and Kunchel had to rediscover the process methods independently.

Research continued and in 1780, Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier, a French nobleman and public official, demonstrated that when P was burned in the air, it produced an acid which weighed more than the original phosphorous. This almost literally exploded the prevelant theory that phosphorous consisted of phlogiston and an acid. But, while his experiments were still in progress, he was arrested and tried by revolutionaries of the French Republic.

M. Lavoisier pleaded for two weeks' grace to conclude his experiments but the tribunal declared that the state has no need of chemists. His request denied, he was guillotined, dying in obscurity, taking his valuable scientific knowledge with him.

But while luminaries in medicine, architecture and commerce have their heroes well represented by such names as Sir Alexander Fleming, Frank Lloyd Wright, J.P. Morgan and many, many others, the historical records of distinguished chemists are remarkably barren. Only after John Walker of England invented the lucifer match, in 1827, did phosphorous become an important commercial commodity. The match was surely an important stage in the industrial revolution -- providing cheap, portable combustion -- but who has ever heard of its inventor?

Chemical professionals -- like their engineering colleagues -- are largely unknown by the public they serve so well; their achievements are ignored by the news media who prefer instead to record the antics of rock stars and junk bond dealers.

Yet chemistry has made fantastic progress in recent years. The contributions of the chemical profession were brought home to me in Washinginton, D.C., when my son Steve and I met with the late Dr. Abel Wolman, then the dean of North American environmental sciences. The much revered Dr. Wolman was in his nineties when we met him. While physically frail, his penetrating intellect and impish sense of humour commanded the rapt attention of internationally renowned environmental engineers and scientists, inevitably concluding in a standing ovation.

Dr. Wolman told us that when he started his scientific career in the early 1900s, the analytical state-of-the-art was only capable of measurements down to one part per ten thousand. By the 1960s, the ability to measure was in the part per million range. Instrumentation and chemistry then proceeded at a staggering rate, he told us.

In the 1980s, analytical chemists could routinely find toxins at parts per trillion and for some, in the parts per quadrillion range. In what Dr. Don Mackay, now a professor at Trent University, once so aptly described as the incomprehensibility of tinyness, science can now deal with concentrations in the range of nanograms, picograms or even femtograms per litre -- ranges so incredibly small that even scientists have difficulty remembering what these prefices mean.

Some have likened current analytical capabilities to an ability to distinguish one or two hairs from amongst the heads of every human on earth. This is a fantastic achievement by the chemical profession, yet its significance is not widely appreciated by the public. It is truly -- after environmental engineering -- the Second Invisible Profession.

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