From the Molecular World

Introduction: The Molecular World of Hermann Kopp.- A Brief Biography.- Scientific work.- The making of the Molecular World.- The reception.- Concluding reflections.- References.

Educated first as a chemist, Alan J. Rocke earned a Ph.D. in history of science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1975. Today he is the Henry Eldridge Bourne Professor of History at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, where he has been teaching since 1978. Rocke is the author of five books and nearly fifty journal articles on the history of chemistry, especially the theoretical development of the science in Europe during the course of the nineteenth century. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and in 2000 received the Dexter Award from the American Chemical Society for lifetime achievement in the history of chemistry.

From the reviews: "The premise of the book is a tour of an aerarium ... made up of containers into which one could peer to gain visual insights into the world of atoms and molecules. ... it will appeal to historians of chemistry with a particular interest into what was going on in our subject in the second half of the 19th century." (Alan Dronsfield, Chemistry World, August, 2012)

"Alan J. Rocke has brought back to vibrant life a fanciful little book that the nineteenth-century physical chemist and historian of chemistry Hermann Kopp privately printed in 1882 as a birthday gift for his close friend Robert Bunsen. ... an excellent addition to the SpringerBriefs in History of Chemistry series, edited by Seth C. Rasmussen." (Mary Jo Nye, ISIS, Vol. 106 (1), 2015)


"Rocke has now provided a full translation of Kopp's book, with an extensive introduction and explanatory footnotes ... . Rocke's translation is a welcome reminder that we still have much to learn about chemists and chemistry in the nineteenth century, and we should be thankful that he has made Kopp's fertile imagination more accessible to non-German-speaking readers." (Peter J. Ramberg, Ambix, Vol. 60 (2), May, 2013)

"In From the Molecular World, Kopp gave a survey of much of the domain of chemical interests from the atomic-molecular viewpoint. ... provides a very useful overview of the theoretical 'state-of-the-art' of chemistry in the early 1880s. ... In our own age of bewilderingly rapid social, economic, scientific technological change, it is comforting to read and savor Kopps molecular fantasy." (Seymour Mauskopf, Angewandte Chemie International Edition, Vol. 52 (13), 2013)
"The premise of the book is a tour of an aerarium ... made up of containers into which one could peer to gain visual insights into the world of atoms and molecules. ... it will appeal to historians of chemistry with a particular interest into what was going on in our subject in the second half of the 19th century." (Alan Dronsfield, Chemistry World, August, 2012)