Reflections on the centenary of the Faraday Society

Fifty years ago, at the Celebration marking the Jubilee of the Faraday Society,¹ F. G. Donnan provided a unique, first-hand view of its birth. He recalled …“a small meeting held at the London office of the consulting engineer, James Swinburne…in late 1902 or early 1903…to start a new scientific Journal and a new scientific Society, which should be concerned with…electrochemistry, electro-metallurgy, and physical chemistry in general…. Swinburne pointed to a pile of ‘Science Abstracts’…and remarked how much attention was now paid to these subjects. A letter from Sir William Ramsay was read, in which he objected to the appearance of a new scientific journal, saying that he had not time enough to read the existing ones”. Not withstanding this complaint, which has echoed down the years, Swinburne's enthusiasm prevailed and the new Society—promoting Electrochemistry, Electro-metallurgy, Chemical Physics, Metallography and Kindred Subjects, began in June 1903.

The first volume of the Transactions of the Faraday Society, edited by its founding Secretary, F. S. Spiers, appeared in January 1905 (and led to the demise of The Electrochemist and Metallurgist, begun in 1901 with which Spiers had also been involved). It included a series of papers, mostly concerned with aspects of electrochemistry and metallurgy, which had been pre-printed and read at meetings of the Society between June and December the previous year, together with the remarks their discussion had provoked—the germ of the Faraday Discussion idea. The average time to publication was rather less than the brilliantly successful 87 days, now being achieved by PCCP! The idea of a General Discussion, in which all the papers focused on a central topic was born in 1907, when the Earl of Berkeley (who lived and experimented in his home on Boars Hill overlooking the dreaming spires of Oxford—just down the road from the more modest home in which the writer would reside a century later) opened the first General Discussion, on ‘Osmotic Pressure’.²

Of course, as Swinburne's remark, “much attention was now paid to these subjects”, reflects, the Faraday Society and its Transactions did not appear ‘out of the blue’. It was a child of its time.³ Recognition of physical chemistry as a distinct sub-discipline linking physics and chemistry began in Berlin in the last decade of the nineteenth century. H. H. Landoldt (remembered not least for the Landolt–Börnstein Physikalische-Technische Tabellen) was its first Professor, followed by H. W. Nernst. Ostwald and van't Hoff's Zeitschrift für Physikalische Chemie which began in 1887, was followed by the creation of the Deutsche Elektrochemie Gesellschaft in 1894 and the Deutsche Bunsen-Gesellschaft für Angewandte Physikalische Chemie in 1902, by Ostwald, van't Hoff and Nernst. The Zeitschrift für Elektrochemie, which first appeared in 1894, evolved into the Zeitschrift für Elektrochemie und Physikalische Chemie in 1904 (and into the Berichte der Bunsen-Gesellschaft in 1963). The first issue of the Société de Chimie Physique's Journal de Chimie-physique appeared in 1903; Kolloid-Zeitschrift began in 1906. Across the Atlantic, the Journal of Physical Chemistry and the American Electrochemical Society had begun in 1896 and 1902, respectively; the Transactions of the American Electrochemical Society, which Faraday Society members received, free of charge, began in 1899. One can begin to appreciate Sir William Ramsay's complaint! As my one time undergraduate tutor John Agar observed in 1953,⁴ from the electrochemist's point of view the Faraday Society had arrived a little too late to share in the excitement of the previous decade but, once established, its terms of reference allowed the Society to spread its remit far more widely and respond to the scientific turbulence of the following years. Its crowning achievement was the concept of the Faraday General Discussion—the germ of which, as has already been noted was present from the start. New directions in ‘the sciences lying between chemistry, physics and biology’ were—and continue to be—identified by the selection of what could now be termed as ‘hot topics’, the international assembly of participants from different fields and the promotion of free, and generally friendly debate. It provided a robust and timeless legacy that has continued to flourish after the amalgamation of the Faraday and Chemical Societies (now the Royal Society of Chemistry) in 1972. The Transactions, successful in its time as an important journal of physical chemistry and continuing in a different format after the amalgamation, is no longer with us. Instead, as Sir William Ramsay would have celebrated, the Dutch (Koninklijke Nederlandse Chemische Vereniging), German (Deutsche Bunsen-Gesellschaft) and Italian (Società Chimica Italiana) Chemical Societies came together with the Royal Society of Chemistry in 1998–99, to create the new journal PCCP, incorporating the Faraday Transactions and the Berichte der Bunsen-Gesellschaft; uniting in its palindromic title, the thorny, and probably semantic issue of serving and inspiring the sub-disciplines of physical chemistry and chemical physics and now uniting in its current ownership, no less than thirteen national chemical societies. Science should know no boundaries, either national or scientific.

While acknowledging our debt to those who have shaped our discipline we also look to the future. These two imperatives will be recognised by the Faraday Division of the RSC, firstly through a special publication which will reproduce some twenty key articles originally published in the Transactions or General Discussion volumes, together with an accompanying ‘expert commentary’, and secondly, through a special celebration organised by the Division's current President, Professor Ian Smith. This will be focused on young scientists aged 16 and upwards, to be held in late October at the Royal Institution (Michael Faraday's home) in London.

References

1. F. G. Donnan, Trans. Faraday Soc., 1953, 49, 459–589.
2. The Earl of Berkeley, Trans. Faraday Soc., 1907, 3, 1–37.
3. L. Sutton and M. Davies, The History of the Faraday Society, Faraday Division of the Royal Society of Chemistry, 1996.
4. J. N. Agar, Trans. Faraday Soc., 1953, 49, 533.

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