The European Science Foundation (ESF), an association of 62 major national funding agencies devoted to basic scientific research in 21 countries, acts as a catalyst for the development of science by bringing together leading scientists and funding agencies to debate, plan, and implement panEuropean scientific and science policy initiatives. The foundation sponsored a program on the Evolution of Chemistry, which has resulted in this collection of 18 chapters by 19 chemists and historians of chemistry or science from 13 countries (5 from the UK, two each from Belgium and Italy, and one each from Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Lithuania, The Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and the USA). Unlike many multiauthor symposiumtype volumes, which are often disparate collections, this book features closely integrated essays because during workshop sessions the contributors discussed precirculated drafts of the chapters to elicit connections and parallels as well as differences in the course of professionalization of chemistry in the various countries. David M. Knight, Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at Durham University, England, and Helge Kragh, Professor of History of Science at Aarhus University, Denmark, have provided a preface and an afterword, respectively, which masterly summarize the contents and conclusions of the individual chapters and thus give an overview of the entire volume.

Although chemistry dates from the practical work of ancient artisans, as a science it matured relatively late compared to the classical sciences of mathematics, astronomy, and physics, which played major roles in the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century. The corresponding Chemical Revolution did not occur until the publication of Lavoisier's Traité élémentaire de chimie (1789), the commencement of the period dealt with in the volume under review. Thus chemistry, soon considered the most fundamental, fashionable, and useful of the natural sciences, began to emerge in Europe as a distinct science and profession only at the inception of the 19th century. As it developed, frequently from an ancillary position in medicine, pharmacy, or industry (e.g., Liebig's worldrenowned laboratory at Giessen began as a pharmaceutical-chemical institute), chemists gradually established themselves as professionals, but very differently in different countries because of their diversities in geography and mobility, history, government, industrialization, employment opportunities, economics, and other factors.

In keeping with these differences, the book, like Gaul, is divided into three parts. Part 1 is "The big three"--France, Germany, and Britain, where the major institutions and developments were located (7 chapters, 127 pages). Part 2 is "Medium developed countries"--Italy, Russia, Spain, Belgium, Ireland, and Sweden, where some eminent chemists worked and important events occurred (6 chapters, 99 pages). And Part 3 is "On the periphery"--Greece, Portugal, Denmark and Norway, Lithuania, and Poland, which were then essentially importers of chemistry, with different connections to the major or medium countries (5 chapters, 94 pages). Although much has previously been written about chemistry in the three major countries and in some of the medium ones, little has been available, especially in English, about the peripheral countries. Travel, translation, and political alliances all played a part in the transmission of chemistry across national borders.

The book traces the social history of chemistry in these 15 European countries and how it became an autonomous and prestigious profession ("a group of people with a full-time vocation based on a shared training which is distinct to the group") and community with the founding of national societies (beginning with Britain's Chemical Society in 1841), the publication of journals, establishment of courses in universities and technical schools, and the holding of national and international congresses, In short, it shows how chemistry in particular and science in general transformed European society during the 19th century, which Knight has aptly called "the Age of Science". And during this period, chemistry was primarily a European science; it was not until after World War I that the center of chemical activity began to shift toward the United States.

Replete with 17 tables, 12 figures, two maps (Europe in 1815 and 1914), and a 5-page (doublecolumn) index, this scrupulously documented (primary and secondary sources, some as recent as 1997 or even in press) volume will be of interest to historians of chemistry or science as well as to chemists concerned with the development of their science.