Karlsruhe Congress

The Karlsruhe Congress was an international meeting of chemists held in Karlsruhe, Germany from 3 to 5 September 1860. It was the first international conference of chemistry worldwide.

The meeting

The Karlsruhe Congress was called so that European chemists could discuss matters of chemical nomenclature, notation, and atomic weights. The organization, invitation, and sponsorship of the conference were handled by August Kekulé, Adolphe Wurtz, and Karl Weltzien. As an example of the problems facing the delegates, Kekulé's ''Lehrbuch der Organischen Chemie'' gave nineteen different formulas used by chemists for acetic acid, as shown in the figure on this page.

An understanding was reached on the time and place of the meeting, and printing of a circular addressed to European chemists listed below, which explained the objectives and goals of an international congress was agreed upon. The circular concluded: "...with the aim of avoiding any unfortunate omissions, the undersigned request that the individuals to whom this circular will be sent please communicate it to their scientist friends who are duly authorized to attend the planned conference."

The circular was sent to:

# Austria
##Innsbruck: Heinrich Hlasiwetz.
##Vienna: Anton Schrötter von Kristelli; Leopold von Pebal.
# Belgium
##Brussels: Jean Servais Stas.
##Ghent: Friedrich August Kekule von Stradonitz.
# France
##Paris: Anselme Payen; Antoine Bussy; Antoine Jérôme Balard; Auguste André Thomas Cahours; Charles Adolphe Wurtz; Edmond Frémy; Eugéne-Melchior Péligot; Henri Étienne Sainte-Claire Deville; Henri Victor Regnault; Jean-Baptiste Boussingault; Jean-Baptiste Dumas; Louis Pasteur; Théophile-Jules Pelouze.
##Rennes: Faustino Malaguti.
# Germany
##Berlin: Eilhard Mitscherlich.
##Freiburg im Breisgau: Lambert Henrich von Babo.
##Geissen: Heinrich Will; Hermann Franz Moritz Kopp.
##Göttingen: Friedrich Wöhler.
##Heidelberg: Robert Bunsen.
##Karlsruhe: Karl Weltzien.
##Leipzig: Otto Linné Erdmann.
##Munich: Justus von Liebig.
##Stuttgart: Hermann von Fehling.
##Tübingen: Adolph Strecker.
# Italy
##Genova: Stanislao Cannizzaro.
##Turim: Raffaele Piria.
# Russia
##Kasan: Nikolay Nikolayevich Beketov.
##St. Petersburg: Alexander Nikolayevich Engelhardt; Carl Julius Fritzsche; Nikolai Nikolaevich Sokolov; Nikolay Nikolaevich Zinin.
# Switzerland
##Zurich: Georg Andreas Karl Staedeler.
##Geneva: Jean Charles Galissard de Marignac.
# United Kingdom
##London: Alexander William Williamson; August Wilhelm von Hofmann; Sir Edward Frankland; William Odling.
##Manchester: Henry Enfield Roscoe.
##Oxford: Sir Benjamin Collins Brodie, 2nd Baronet.

The Karlsruhe meeting ended with no firm agreement on the vexing problem of atomic and molecular weights. However, on the meeting's last day reprints of Stanislao Cannizzaro's 1858 paper on atomic weights, in which he utilized earlier work by Amedeo Avogadro, were distributed. Cannizzaro's efforts exerted a heavy and, in some cases, an almost immediate influence on the delegates. Lothar Meyer later wrote that on reading Cannizzaro's paper, "The scales seemed to fall from my eyes."

An important long-term result of the Karlsruhe Congress was the adoption of the now-familiar atomic weights. Prior to the Karlsruhe meeting, and going back to Dalton's work in 1803, several systems of atomic weights were in use. In one case, a value of 1 was adopted as the weight of hydrogen (the base unit), with 6 for carbon and 8 for oxygen. As long as there were uncertainties over atomic weights then the compositions of many compounds remained in doubt. Following the Karlsruhe meeting, values of about 1 for hydrogen, 12 for carbon, 16 for oxygen, and so forth were adopted. This was based on a recognition that certain elements, such as hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen, were composed of diatomic molecules and not individual atoms.

Ihde has argued that the Karlsruhe meeting was the first international meeting of chemists and that it led to the eventual founding of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC).

Attendance

The number of people who wanted to participate was considerable, and on 3 September 1860, 140 chemists met together in the meeting room of the second Chamber of State, which was made available by the Frederick I, Grand Duke of Baden.

According to Wurtz, the printed list of members, supplemented by handwritten additions, contains 126 names listed below.

# Belgium:
#*''Brussels'': J. Stas;
#*''Ghent'': Donny, A. Kekulé
# Germany:
#*''Berlin'': Ad. Baeyer, G. Quinke;
#*''Bonn'': H. Landolt;
#*''Breslau'': Lothar Meyer;
#*''Kassel'': Guckelberger,;
#*Klausthal: Streng;
#*''Darmstadt''
E. Winkler

#*''Erlangen'': v. Gorup-Besanez;
#*''Freiburg i. B.'': v. Babo, Schneyder (Woldemar Alexander Adolph von Schneider, 1843–1914);
#*''Giessen'': Boeckmann (Emil Boeckmann), H. Kopp, H. Will;
#*''Göttingen'': F. Beilstein;
#*''Halle a. S.'': W. Heintz;
#*''Hanover'': Heeren

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