BUTLEROV, ALEKSANDR MIKHAILOVICH

(b. Chistopol, Kazanskaya, Russia, 9 September 1828; d. Butlerovka, Kazanskaya, Russia, 17 August 1886)

chemistry, chemical structure, professionalization of Russian science. For the originalarticle on Butlerov see DSB, vol. 2.

Since G. V. Bykov’s study of Butlerov appeared in the original DSB, relatively few works have been published that have examined Butlerov and his outstanding contributions to chemistry. The most important of these studies concern the nature of Butlerov’s contribution to the the ory of chemical structure, but others address topics including Butlerov’s role in the professionalization of Russian chemistry, Butlerov’s involvement with spiritualism, and his ultimately futile efforts to secure Dmitri Mendeleev a full membership in the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences.

The Theory of Chemical Structure. In his DSB study, Bykov forcefully argued that Butlerov was the originator of the concept of chemical structure. In doing so, he paid scant attention to Friedrich August Kekulé and other chemists who traditionally have been seen as the main contributors to the development of structure theory.

Bykov’s analyses in the DSB and elsewhere, as well as those of other Soviet historians of chemistry, were quite successful in bringing Butlerov’s name to the attention of scholars outside of the Soviet Union, and some of these began to give Butlerov credit for the theory of chemical structure. In the years since Bykov’s DSB article, however, other very careful work has shifted the balance of attention back to Kekulé and other scientists for the formulation of the original concepts that comprised the structural theory in the years around 1858. Nevertheless, Butlerov played a seminal role in establishing a coherent theoretical framework for understanding these ideas, as well as in his experimental work elucidating various aspects of the structure theory.

Butlerov’s interest in chemical structure undoubtedly arose during his first trip abroad in 1857–1858. Up to this time, he had focused his attention on teaching and finishing his master’s and doctoral theses, neither of which contained significant experimental work. During his trip abroad, Butlerov met several times with Kekulé and Richard August Carl Emil Erlenmeyer, and later worked for several months in Charles Adolphe Wurtz’s laboratory in Paris, conducting his first significant organic chemistry research there. It is clear that Butlerov’s attention had shifted as a result of these conversations and meetings early in his trip, as his official plan for the trip written before he left Kazan included no provision for laboratory work at all and strongly hinted that the most important goal of the trip was to visit prominent vacation spots in Europe! While in Paris, Butlerov deepened his interest in the theory of chemical structure through discussions with Archibald Scott Couper, who shortly after Butlerov’s departure published a paper that contained many of the essential features of Kekulé’s theory, but which appeared slightly later. Butlerov, along with Couper, was one of the earliest members of the Société Chimique de Paris and presented an early version of his structure theory at a meeting of the society in 1858.

Butlerov returned to Russia following his trip abroad with a desire not only to transform chemistry in Russia

but also to contribute to chemistry’s general theoretical development. He continued the experiments he initiated in Paris and did not allow his geographical isolation in Kazan to isolate him from the chemical debates raging in western Europe, which often had happened to earlier Russian chemists when they returned from study abroad. When Butlerov next traveled abroad in 1861, he delivered a speech at the Speyer meeting of the Congress of German Naturalists and Physicians (Versammlung Deutscher Naturforscher und Aerzte), which Bykov took as the founding statement of the theory of chemical structure. However, Butlerov did not introduce any fundamentally new concepts in this speech. For example, while Butlerov insisted on the need to determine the chemical and not the actual physical arrangement of atoms in a compound, this distinction derived from a long line of his predecessors, including Jean Baptiste Dumas, Charles Frédéric Gerhardt, Auguste Laurent, Kekulé, Wurtz, and others. Moreover, Butlerov’s call for chemists to search for “truly rational formulae” was not so different from Kekulé’s use of formulas, even though the latter sometimes used different formulae for the same substance in order to illustrate differing functions or reactions. Furthermore, Kekulé did not at this time begin “in despair to reject rational formulas” (in Bykov’s phrase), but merely temporarily used empirical formulas in one paper because the substances he was addressing were too complicated for any other notational style to describe them simply. What was important about Butlerov’s 1861 speech was that it clearly and convincingly argued that chemical structure could be determined through a consistent application of the theory of atomicity. Alan Rocke suggests that Butlerov’s role here in the development of chemical structure was similar to the role Stanislao Cannizzaro had played only a few months earlier with respect to atomic and molecular magnitudes (1993). Finally, Butlerov himself in this speech disclaimed any priority to a new theory, but emphasized the need to consistently develop the existing theory of chemical structure.

In the years after 1861, Butlerov and his students conducted important experimental work that was designed to illustrate various aspects of the theory of chemical structure or its consequences. For example, Butlerov used structure theory to predict many different positional and structural isomers and he obtained many of them in the laboratory. One of the most famous of these was tertiary butyl alcohol, which Butlerov synthesized in 1863. The next year he was able to identify this compound as one predicted earlier by Hermann Kolbe. Butlerov and his students were able to synthesize and identify many homologues of this compound, greatly strengthening the structural theory. In the course of this work, Butlerov and his students formulated many different “rules” that showed how the specific structural environments of compounds help shape their chemical reactivity. Butlerov became, arguably, the most consistent and forceful advocate for the thorough use of the concepts of chemical structure. Butlerov himself never claimed to be the originator of the theory of chemical structure and did not deny Kekulé’s role, but rather wanted his own role as a major developer of the theory to be acknowledged. Butlerov’s goal was to clarify the confused and complex situation of organic chemistry by promoting a consistent use of standard terminology.

Professionalization of Russian Chemistry. Butlerov dramatically changed the style of his chemistry research after his trip abroad in 1857–1858, as well as its intellectual focus. Upon Butlerov’s return from abroad, he expanded the chemistry laboratory and began to attract his first student “disciples.” Of crucial significance for Russian science was his determination to professionalize chemistry at Kazan University by introducing various innovations that would put its teaching on the same basis as the most advanced university in Germany. First of all, this meant teaching chemistry through extensive laboratory exercises and practical work, including original research efforts, a pedagogical innovation of Justus Liebig and certain other German chemists of the 1830s and 1840s. Up to this time, chemistry laboratories at Russian universities largely were occupied with preparing items for lecture demonstrations, although a few students occasionally conducted some laboratory experiments, as did Butlerov when he was a student. Butlerov gradually persuaded the university to allocate more funds for the chemistry laboratory, which would permit all students to receive intensive practical training in the laboratory.

More importantly, Butlerov began to construct a stable pathway or career ladder for students who wished to pursue advanced training in chemistry. Over the course of several years, Butlerov obtained university funding to support a group of laboratory assistants who after several years of study and research work would be sent abroad to work for several years, usually in one of the best-known chemistry laboratories of western Europe. After returning to Kazan to finish their degrees, the young chemists would then be able to compete for a chemistry position at a higher educational institution in Russia. In spite of the relatively small number of chemistry students Butlerov was able to attract to his laboratory, he was spectacularly successful in producing future chemistry professors. His students became prominent chemists at Kazan, Moscow, and Warsaw Universities, among others. In addition, the tradition of excellence in chemistry continued at Kazan long after Butlerov’s departure.

Other Aspects of Butlerov’s Career. After Butlerov moved to St. Petersburg in 1868, he became heavily involved with spiritualism, an interest that lasted until his death. Until recently this aspect of Butlerov’s career has not attracted much attention from scholars, and most historians of science tend to ignore or minimize any possible impact on or connection of spiritualism with his other more “scientific” activities. Butlerov was introduced to spiritualist phenomena by his cousin through marriage, Alexander N. Aksakov, a member of a very prominent cultural family in Russia at that time. Butlerov believed that spiritualist phenomena could be studied scientifically, but a scientific commission to investigate mediumistic phenomena organized by Mendeleev in 1875–1876 ended in mutual recriminations over deception and unfair practices. Bykov implies that this commission revealed the mediums as hoaxers and that the episode ended with a victory for the opponents of spiritualism. The verdict at the time, however, was not so clear-cut. The spiritualists claimed that Mendeleev and the commission had not followed the ground rules for séances, and so the results of their experiments were invalid; whether the spiritualists’ objection was legitimate remains a matter of controversy.

While it is abundantly clear that Butlerov devoted considerable time and effort to spiritualism, the full extent of his activities and correspondence with other spiritualists likely will remain a mystery, as much of Butlerov’s personal papers concerning spiritualism were destroyed after his death.

Perhaps surprisingly, considering Butlerov’s clashes with Mendeleev over spiritualism, Butlerov took the lead only a few years later in trying to have Mendeleev elected to a full chair in the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. Butlerov had become involved with the Academy of Sciences shortly after his arrival in St. Petersburg and by 1874 had been elected to the highest (full chair) position in chemistry. Butlerov soon began to promote Mendeleev for an adjunct position at the Academy, but this failed in 1874, although a later vote for Mendeleev as a corresponding member in 1876 was successful. Soon after the death in 1880 of N. N. Zinin, a prominent chemist who held the chair of technology at the Academy, Butlerov proposed Mendeleev’s candidacy for the vacant technology chair. However, the Academy declined to elect Mendeleev, despite Butlerov’s vociferous advocacy. The result was a firestorm of protest in the media, which continued for months. Butlerov was convinced that an anti-Russian faction at the Academy was responsible for Mendeleev’s rejection, although the situation was more complicated than only a conflict over nationalism. Butlerov continued to press for the election of Russians to the Academy until his death.

SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY

WORK BY BUTLEROV

Lektsii organicheskoi khimii, Nauchnoe nasledstvo 18, ed. O. D.Sterligov. Moscow: Nauka, 1990.

OTHER SOURCES

Brooks, Nathan M. “Alexander Butlerov and the Professionalization of Science in Russia.” Russian Review 57 (1, 1998): 10–24.

Bykov, G. V. “K istoriografii teorii khimicheskogo stroeniia.”Voprosy istorii estestvoznaniia i tekhniki 4 (1982): 121–130. A response to Rocke’s 1981 article written shortly before Bykov’s death.

Dmitriev, Igor S. “Skuchnaia istorii (o neizbranii D. I.Mendeleeva v Imperatorskuiu akademii nauk v 1880 g.).”Voprosy istorii estestvoznaniia i tekhniki 2 (2002): 231–280.

Gordin, Michael D. A Well-Ordered Thing. Dmitrii Mendeleev and the Shadow of the Periodic Table. New York: Basic Books, 2004. Includes information about Butlerov’s involvement with spiritualism and his efforts to have Mendeleev elected to the Imperial Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg.

Rocke, Alan J. “Kekulé, Butlerov, and the Historiography of the Theory of Chemical Structure.” British Journal for the History of Science 14 (1981): 27–57. A detailed examination of the competing claims for Kekulé and Butlerov as the originator of the theory of chemical structure.

———.The Quiet Revolution. Hermann Kolbe and the Science of Organic Chemistry. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.

Nathan Brooks