This paper, which is also a contribution to the somewhat understudied area of the history of biography, discusses a couple of short accounts of the life of the English chemist Humphry Davy (1778-1829) and the three major biographies published in the years following his death. These latter were an ‘anti-biography’ by John Ayrton Paris (1831) and two admiring biographies by Davy’s younger brother John Davy (1836, 1858). By examining the processes surrounding their writing and publication, including the involvement (or rather lack thereof) by his widow, Jane Davy, this paper will illustrate how Davy’s biographical reputation was constructed. Furthermore, this approach reveals how his surviving manuscripts and related documents came to be collected and preserved and so help us understand the effects they continue to exert on our understanding of Davy in particular and nineteenth-century science in general.

The reception of the periodic system of elements in European countries has its specificity and differences. This paper will explore the first recognition of the periodic system of elements in Croatia after its publication (1869). Croatia was then a part of the Kingdom of Croatia, Slavonia, and Dalmatia within Austria-Hungary. Chronologically, Croatian scientific community firstly recognized Mendeleev's work through Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts in 1882, electing him as its honorary member. The proposal for Mendeleev's election lists his published works but emphasizes that the discovery of the periodic system of elements (lex Mendeleev) alone would be enough to elect him as an honorary member. Thus, the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts became the first European science academy to honor Mendeleev. Circumstances regarding this election will be presented in the paper. Until the University in Zagreb, capital of Croatia, was restored (1874), chemistry in Croatia was only thought at a lower level, as a part of real-high schools curriculum. The discovery of the periodic system of elements and the following discoveries that lead to its confirmation occurs simultaneously with the development of the chemistry curriculum at Zagreb University. The first University professors were also the members of Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts that elected Mendeleev as its honorary member. The connection between the role of the Academy of Sciences and Arts and the implementation of the periodic system in the educational process in Croatia will also be explored in the paper.

In the final year of World War II, scientists advising the U.S. government on hormone herbicide research struggled to develop censorship practices that blended conventional modes of publication with the comparatively draconian model of atomic secrecy. Botanist Ezra J. Kraus encountered this dilemma in his capacity as referee for the Advisory Committee on Scientific Publications (ACSP), under the aegis of the National Academy of Sciences. Officially, his task was to review manuscripts prior to their publication and to withhold those of military significance. In practice, particular features of hormone herbicide research, including its disciplinary affiliations and preexisting publication practices, rendered Kraus’s project difficult. This paper examines Kraus’s work with the ACSP in the context of his own herbicide research at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, chemical weapons research at Camp Detrick, and his advocacy of prompt publication following V-J Day. By restoring Kraus’s project of censorship to its proper disciplinary and institutional context, I demonstrate that decisions on censorship were not exclusively questions of civilian versus military applications but rather intersected with a desire to preserve priority for military-contracted researchers after the war. These interlocking questions of dual use and priority claims came to characterize the 20th-century history of Agent Orange, the most infamous object of Kraus’s short-lived censorship committee.

When asked for the secret of his scientific success, Friedrich Paneth liked to refer to “serendipity”. This illustrious word had been introduced into the sociology of science by Robert Merton in the 1950ies. Since then it has become a vogue word for all kinds of accidental discoveries, but if it is used as a description of a logic of discovery it can serve as a historiographical tool. In this narrow sense “serendipity” implies making an unexpected observation, followed by a correct abduction. The discovery by Paneth in 1917 of bismuth hydride, which I will describe in some detail, is a conspicuous example of making use of abductive reasoning in chemistry. Notwithstanding its inherent fallibility I would like to suggest that the abduction pattern is one gateway to novelty in science. Among others, a candidate episode from the history of chemistry to corroborate this point may be Avogadro´s hypothesis.

This paper will examine an oft-overlooked development in the history of twentieth-century biology: the rise of bioenergetics, or the study of energy transformations in living organisms. Through a case study of the work of biochemist Fritz Albert Lipmann and his associates, this paper will describe the changing role of the molecule adenosine triphosphate (ATP) in bioenergetic research. In the course of his work on phosphate metabolism, Lipmann developed the notion of the “high-energy” or “energy-rich” phosphate bond, which he symbolized by the “squiggle” notation, or ~P. According to Lipmann, ~P’s stored large amounts of energy that could be released when these bonds were broken; for example, in a molecule of ATP, which has three phosphate groups next to each other. Lipmann’s work on ~P suggested that energy from carbohydrate breakdown could be “captured” in the phosphoanhydride bonds of ATP, which biochemists increasingly began to refer to as the universal “energy currency” of the cell. The “currency” of ATP circulated within a metaphorical “cellular economy,” in which energy-requiring metabolic reactions were often linked to energy-releasing metabolic reactions. Building upon recent work on the history of metabolism, this paper aims to articulate a new interpretation of twentieth-century biology by arguing that the bioenergetic metaphor of the “cellular economy” shaped the development of modern biology in ways distinct from the metaphor of “genetic information,” which has received a great deal of historiographical attention.