Another history of chemistry? When I studied the subject in 1950 in the late Claude K. Deischer's class at the University of Pennsylvania, our text was Frank J. Moore's A History of Chemistry (1918; 3rd ed., 1939), one of the few books, all written by practicing chemists, then available in English. Now, paradoxically, at a time when such classes are no longer a standard part of the usual undergraduate curriculum, we are treated to a plethora of histories, most written by professional historians of science. In two recent years alone four histories have appeared: David M. Knight's Ideas in Chemistry: A History of the Science (Rutgers University Press, 1992), William H. Brock's The History of Chemistry (Chapman & Hall, 1992), William H. Brock's The Norton History of Chemistry (Norton, 1993), and Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent and Isabelle Stengers's Histoire de la Chimie (Editions de la Decuoverte, 1993). The book under review here is a felicitous English translation of the last-named volume.

The answer to the inevitable question "Is this history different from all the others?" is a resounding "Yes." Although almost all the personalities and topics traditionally considered in the usual history of chemistry course are here, from the ancient alchemists to the latest developments (Nitinol, "cold fusion", and fullerenes, with references as recent as 1994) they are treated in a markedly different manner and context, with a greater emphasis on interdependence and relationships between events than is found in conventional texts. Instead of saying that chemistry has a history, the authors, who are historians of science at the Universities of Paris and Brussels, respectively, propose that it is a history in progress. In their own words,

This book is an attempt to meet the challenge of writing a panoramic, global history of chemistry, one that is not simply a list of facts and theories or an accumulation of anecdotes about individual chemists. Chemistry has been presented here as the real subject of a history that has developed through the constantly reiterated commitments of people, the knowledge they produce, and the meanings assigned to that knowledge.

The authors show chemistry as a science whose identity has changed in response to its relation to society and to other disciplines. Their book is arranged chronologically, and each of its five chapters profiles a different face of chemistry, delineating its identity during each time period and presenting a corresponding picture of the chemists of that period. Chapter 1, "Origins" (the shortest chapter, 33 pp), presents "the polymorphous variety of artisanal practices and cultural traditions" that developed into chemistry in the 17th century. The practitioners during this period are a diverse group of alchemists, physicians, metallurgists, and mystics. Chapter 2, "The Conquest of a Territory", which deals with the 18th century, "reveals chemistry as a conqueror claiming the dignity and legitimacy of a science in many distinct ways." Its practitionersnatural philosophers, physicians, or pharmacists by trainingare either academics or lecturers who disseminated knowledge by giving public demonstrations. Chapter 3, "A Science of Professors" (the longest chapter, 68 pp), describes the academic and professional face of chemistry during the 19th century, with professors of chemistry as the main characters. Chapter 4, "Industrial Expansion", profiles chemistry in the world of work and production during the 19th and 20th centuries, with chemist-entrepreneurs, inventors, and engineers as its primary practitioners. Chapter 5, "Dismembering a Territory", presents a chemistry whose territory has been increasingly dismembered into a multitude of more or less hybrid or autonomous subdisciplines, its typical worker being "the service chemist who works outside disciplinary boundaries and uses his or her chemical expertise in a variety of areas of research or production."

The authors succeed admirably in demonstrating that from its very beginning, chemistry's position in the world of knowledge and culture had been determined by a combination of three factors that were constantly being redefined: laboratory techniques, professions, and institutions. This controversial, provocative, and thought-provoking book abounds with questions, many of which (although not all) are answered. It treats chemistry as a study whose subject matter, the nature and behavior of qualitatively different materials, remains constant, while its methods and disciplinary boundaries shift constantly. Instructors of history of chemistry courses, to whom I recommend it warmly, will probably want to supplement this relatively slim volume, which contains few formulas or equations, with detailed material from more traditional texts. The book will also be of great interest to chemical educators in general and practicing chemists who, like me, have devoted their lives to a science which, in the last chapter, is portrayed as "a service science, subordinated to physics, and in the service of biology and industry, as well" - an appraisal that I found somewhat disturbing and anxiety-provoking.