The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1916-06-21
The Romance of
 Synthetic Chemistry
Hsador Novak)

OnGIlIsLTy asgr become for us a virtual storehouses a, veritable wonder gotto of the mar velous and the mysterious. For cen turies man has worked to bring the contents of this wonder cavern to the clear light of scientific knowledge and the ken of his fellow men. At the present time there are more true pioneers and explorers in the field than ever before; more ardent zeal ous workers in the fascinating, won derful dominion of chemical knoWl- edge seeking to open yet wider it's portals to human understanding. Now one of them c1everer or more for tunate than his fellows, makes an i'm portant step towards progress and he becomes famous in a day. Heedless of this >ephemera1 fame, the mass of earnest workers strive steadily for ward. Everyone has surely observed sometimes with personal regret, that very we'll developed bump of destruct- iveness which is the prime attribute of a healthy child. You have seen how the energies now expended in destruction were consumed before in futilities-in uselessness. The sight of a child cIambering upon a chair to seize the moon is an example Of the wasted effort. After the take-things- to-pieces period, however, there comes a time when the spirit of the child moves him to put things to- gether-to construct. We can trace. these three stages in the development of chemistry.
 Early chemistry. or alchemy, as it should be called, was the chiIds ago of futiIity. The attempts to discover the philosophers stone, the elixir or life or the a1kahest were with their narrow Knowledge, as futile and ab- surd as the baby climbing upon the chair to reach for the moon.
 After these centuries of vain req
 sonless striving for an impossible goal. there rose a new class of chem its whom we might term the chemists of destruc uctiveness or analysis, whose principal aim was to decompose all forms of matter into their simplest forms. Their purpose was an i'm portant and useful one; they demol- l ished the fanciful fantastic struct- ures of the aIchemists, they delved down to the bedrock of fact. Then. and only then, could that great con
 structive work, synthetic chemistry, hope to meet with any success, when | it had a solid foundation firmly and truly fixed and laid.
 Until 1928 the idea held universally was that only by the action of a special vital force could the complex
 substances, occurring in plant and animal organisms be produced. It was | l in the laboratory. It remained, how 1 ever, for a German chemist named Wohler to achieve the impossible and 1 to produce from inorganic substances a purely animal product. In that year 1 of 1928 he succeeded in synthesizing carbonnide, an organic secretion Of | animal origin. This feat completely capsized the old theory Vital force'' was conclusively not at all necessary l for the production or organic sub stances-a conclusion which is being l confirmed today in every chemical factory, in every research laboratory. | Thus was Wohler fixed in the annals of the science as its first synthetic chemist.
 Wohler's epoch-making discovery was. however. important in itself; only a small accomplishment compar- ed with the gigantic strides which the l science of synthetic chemistry has taken since then. The chemist has learned how to produce in the labor atory thousands of substances occur ring in plant and animal life; in fact. 1 it is a curious thing to note that he has produced several organic dyes. magneta and Bismarck brown, to be l specific which have never been zound
 in nature, thus forestallinE her and
 virtually beating her at her own | game.''
 Some of us may now ask: ''Wlly
 worry over synthesis? Why not
 thankfully accept natures gifts and
 forget about this perplextng subject
 wonderful though it be?' The
 answer is simple, almost obvious. Ma | ture is not inexhaustible; mines of
 valuable chemical do not long sur
 vive excessive drain. It iss therefore,
 necessary for man to make for him
 self what he cannot expect from ma
 ture. We see there that synthesis is not merely a scientific curiosity but
 an extremely practical and valuable l addition to our commercial resources
 In the earlier days Of synthetic
 chemistry the science was regarded
 only as an impractical, highly thec-
 retical branch of knowIedge-how
 different is it nowl The laboratory l Ccontinued on Page 14@