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Volume 1, Number 10
Editor Neil Gordon said,
"The great response received during 1924 from
Chemical Education inspires us to put forth our best efforts for
1925. This Journal has seemed to meet a need in both this country and abroad." As
an example of the response from abroad, Gordon printed a letter from H. A.
Peters, Chairman of the Section of Teachers of the Dutch Chemical Society.
The letter began, "Some few days ago I received the September issue of the
Journal of Chemical Education and I must
say that I like it very much. It is just the sort of thing that I am seeking", and
went on to volunteer to publicize the
Journal to members of the Dutch Chemical Society.
In a paper titled, "A Plea for
Rationally Co-ordinated Courses in Analytical Chemistry", P. H. M. P. Brinton
of the University of Minnesota stated, "It is pretty generally admitted that
students do not learn as much from our courses as we should like to have
them learnand the widespread interest in these problems is evidence of the
need for reform." Brinton argued that there was "too sharp a division between
the courses in qualitative and quantitative analysis" and suggested that several
authors (himself not included) collaborate to create coordinated textbooks that
integrated the two subjects, eliminating much of the repetition that he found
in existing qual and quant courses.
C. H. Stone, English High
School, Boston, described a new high school course in chemistry that was
intended for students who had taken one year of chemistry already, but who were
not planning to go to college. Apparently there were enough students interested
in chemistry, but not in post-secondary education, to make such a course
worthwhile. The course concentrated on practical chemistry and the laboratory
was its central factor.
Volume 25, Number 12
The Journal's cover was silver
in color and contained birthday candles. Editor Norris Rakestraw noted that
this issue completed 25 years of publication
and thanked a number of persons
who had contributed to the Journal during its first 25 years. Most important
of these was Harvey F. Mack, who "personally kept the
Journal solvent for a number of years", and whose photograph
appears here.
In a companion piece
immediately following the editorial, the
Journal 's second editor, Otto Reinmuth,
described Mack's contribution during the depression years of the 1930s: "Mr.
Mack's stated reason for optimism-that no worthy project, honestly conceived,
and vigorously prosecuted, could fail-struck me as extremely naïve. I used
to have cold chills whenever I wondered what would happen to the
Journal if someone should take the man aside and explain the facts of life to him."
According to other reports at the time, Harvey Mack used his personal credit to
back as much as $20,000 in unpaid print bills that the
Journal had accumulated.
The series Chemical Education
in American Institutions featured Hope College as representative of many
primarily undergraduate institutions. Especially interesting was reference to a
report titled, "Science and Public Policy, Manpower for Research" (U.S.
Govt. Printing Office, 1947). During the years 1935 to 1945, "Hope College,
Juniata College, Monmouth College, St. Olaf's College, and Oberlin College
combined produced more candidates for the doctor's degree in chemistry than
did Johns Hopkins University, Fordham University, Columbia University,
Tulane University, and Syracuse University, all together." Similar statistics
compiled since 1948 continue to reflect the importance of primarily undergraduate
institutions in attracting students to careers in chemical research and education.
The Report of the New England Association of Chemistry Teachers
described its 1948 summer conference, which was devoted to a subject that
had been a major concern during the Journal
's first year: correlation of high-school and college chemistry
courses. The conference concluded that a system of credit by examination would be
most effective in integrating high-school and college courses.
Volume 50, Number 12
This last issue of the
Journal's 50th year included recollections of
two former editors, Norris Rakestraw and William Kieffer, and a paper by
William G. Kessel titled, "The Beginning of the
Journal and the Division of Chemical Education". The latter was
excerpted from a much more detailed history of the Division, written upon the
occasion of its 50th anniversary, which nearly coincides with that of this
Journal. The Journal 's advertising manager,
Frank Altschul Jr. listed Journal
advertisers from the year of their first
participation. Our first payment for an ad was from
the Chemical Catalog Company of Chicago, which later
became Reinhold Publishing Company.
On the occasion of the
Journal 's 50th anniversary, Tom Lippincott's
editorial raised the question of whether it had
"made a contribution to chemistry, to
teaching, learning, or understanding, to education in the broader
sense?" His response to his own question was
"If we were indulged a brief flight of
fancy on this happy occasion, we would wish that readers might think of
This Journal as a place wherein countless
generative ideas, old and new, that form both the substance and the catalysts for
chemical science and chemical thought are described with a freshness and
excitement akin to that accompanying their discovery, and wherein a thousand great
chemistry teachers of the past and present live and speak and teach and write."
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