Mobile Edition
Print
Get the Mag
Weekly Updates[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Jane Haldimand Marcet. A lady after my own heart! Although not a scientist, her contribution to science was huge. I suppose we could call her an inventor. Her invention? Popular science writing!
In the early years of the nineteenth century, privileged Londoners flocked to the theatrical public lectures on science given at the Royal Institution by the likes of the brilliant chemist Sir Humphry Davy, but it was through Jane Marcet's Conversations on Chemistry that the masses had their first exposure to science.
Jane Haldimand, daughter of a wealthy Swiss banker, grew up in London, educated by the best tutors. After her mother's death, young Jane took over the role of acting as hostess at her father's frequent dinner parties for the city's intellectual elite, which often included a smattering of scientists. But Jane's interest in science really mushroomed when she married Alexander Marcet, a physician who had become interested in the chemical analysis of kidney stones.
The Marcets frequently attended Davy's entertaining demonstrations on chemistry, but Jane often found the science confusing. Luckily, her husband was very adept at clarifying the concepts for her, and Jane became convinced that this conversational style of teaching was highly effective. Somewhat curiously she concluded that this was especially so for the female sex, "whose education is seldom calculated to prepare their minds for abstract ideas, or scientific language."
Maybe, Jane thought, a book written in a question and answer format, rather than the traditional dry, didactic style, would engage women who had habitually shied away from science. And so in 1806 Conversations on Chemistry, the first book aimed at popularizing the subject, was born. Its success was phenomenal, and not only among the "fair sex." Conversations introduced the public to the excitement of chemistry, cruising through at least sixteen editions in England and an equal number in America.
The book was based on a series of conversations between a teacher, Mrs. B, and her two inquisitive teenage students, Emily and Caroline. "To confess the truth, Mrs.B.," Caroline begins, "I am not disposed to form a very favourable idea of chemistry, nor do I expect to derive much entertainment from it." Probably a reflection of Jane's own initial skirmishes with the subject. Before long, however, Caroline begins to sing a different tune, as Mrs. B., through a series of experiments and ingenious examples, introduces the girls to the fundamental principles and applications of chemistry.
They watch in amazement as an iron knife immersed in a copper sulphate solution becomes coated with copper, they sniff the "fetid" gas (hydrogen sulphide) produced when sulphur is ignited in the presence of hydrogen, and are astounded by the brilliant glow of burning phosphorus. But Marcet's real talent lay in connecting the experiments to everyday life. The glowing phosphorus, for example, was related to matches, and the smell of hydrogen sulphide to Harrowgate, a spa popular for the supposed therapeutic properties of its sulphurous waters.
Although Marcet had no training in chemistry, her treatment of the subject is remarkably lucid in the context of the times. Lavoisier had already published his treatise on the elements but Dalton's atomic theory had not yet become mainstream. Marcet's terms, such as "elemental bodies," "constituent parts" and "elastic fluids" (gases) sound odd today, but she did use them very effectively to explain the phenomena she explored with her two curious students.
Marcet had an imaginative way of introducing concepts.
"This ring I wear on my finger owes its brilliancy to a small piece of carbon," Mrs. B. exclaims, as she begins a discussion of this element.
"Surely you are jesting, I thought your ring was diamond!" Caroline exclaims with surprise. "It is so, but diamond is nothing more than carbon in a crystallized state," comes the retort.
"That is astonishing!" bubbles Emily. "Is it possible to see two things apparently more different than diamond or charcoal?"
Caroline then chimes in with: "it is indeed curious to think we adorn ourselves with jewels of charcoal!"
And so begins a journey into the chemistry of carbon.
How do we know that the diamond is made of carbon, the girls wonder? A rather dramatic experiment follows in which both a piece of diamond and a piece of charcoal are burned in a stream of oxygen, each yielding carbon dioxide gas, implying that they are both made of carbon. Clever. But the experiments don't stop there. Naturally carbonated water from spring sources was a very popular beverage at the time, and Mrs. B. goes on to show how carbon dioxide can be dissolved in water to mimic the commercial product.
"Here, my dear, is an instance in which, by a chemical process, we can exactly copy the operations of nature," she said.
Conversations in Chemistry turned out to be extremely influential. Michael Faraday, arguably the greatest scientist of the nineteenth century, read Marcet's book while working as a printer's apprentice and was inspired by it to pursue science. But perhaps Marcet's greatest contribution was in introducing a writing style that appealed to the public and made it possible for people to appreciate the importance of being scientifically literate.
Joe Schwarcz, MCIC
Joe Schwarcz, MCIC, is the director of McGill University's Office for Science and Society. He hosts the Dr. Joe Show on Montreal's radio station CJAD and Toronto's CFRB. The broadcast is available at www.CJAD.com.
FEED