The Foundation of Organic Chemistry

Abstract

In the first half of the nineteenth century, many chemists were reluctant to think in terms of atoms of uncertain weight and molecules of uncertain formula. But for those who wished to utilise the atomic theory, the greatest challenge came from the field of organic chemistry. It was as a result of growth in this area during the first 60 years of the nineteenth century that it became imperative to settle the question of uncertain atomic weights and to determine accurate molecular formulae. The attempts to systematise the growing number of carbon compounds also led, in the 1850s, to the concept of valency. In this chapter we shall be concerned with the development of organic chemistry up to the emergence of this idea, one of the most fundamental in the science.