The Haus "Energie" of Chemistry Nobel Laureate Wilhelm Ostwald

When Wilhelm Ostwald retired from Leipzig University in 1906, he was recognized as a founder of physical chemistry. Being an academic chemist had been an exciting and rewarding career, but now he felt drawn to dimensions of life beyond the world of a chemistry professor and textbook author.

His other interests included the history and philosophy of science, the supervision of work on his summer residence in the tiny nearby town of Großbothen and a vast array of writing and painting projects. Here was a scientist with a great appetite for what we know as the "liberal arts."

In 1909 his more relaxed work life—i.e., "retirement"— was interrupted by the announcement that he had won the Nobel Prize in chemistry. Established in the last decade of the nineteenth century, the first Nobel Prizes were awarded in 1901. Deciding who should receive these early prizes was a most difficult task.

Despite initial misgivings from the scientific com- munity, Ostwald developed a strong reputation. An early advocate of the new dis- cipline of physical chemistry, he worked to establish energy relationships as one of the driving forces of chemical reactions. He thought that the investigation of energy changes during chemical transformations was so important—more important than picturing the reactions as being due to colliding atoms and molecules—that he called his beautiful estate near Leipzig the "Energie haus."

Ostwald's laboratory in Leipzig was a magnet school for many ambitious young chemists. But there was a problem—he did not believe in atoms. In fact, he was one of the last important chemists not to agree with atomism. He thought that chemists should restrict themselves to studying measurable phenomena such as energy changes, refusing to accept atomic theory as anything more than convenient fiction. After all, no one had ever seen an atom. For this reason, some have called Ostwald a "chemical atomist" as contrasted to a "physical atomist."

It wasn't until 1908 that Ostwald renounced his anti-atomism stand. It was Brownian motion that finally convinced him. Brownian motion is the phenomenon that always amazes Trixie in the comic strip "Hi & Lois." "Sunbeam" is visible because the dust particles in the air can be seen to dance rapidly around when illuminated by the beam. Ostwald's conversion to physical as well as chemical atomism made it possible for him to receive the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1909.

Life changed for Ostwald but not only because of the Nobel Prize. World War I was on the horizon. As that "war to end all wars" raged about him and his family, Ostwald continued his passion for painting. He was a prolific painter—producing more than four thousand landscapes and sketches—but, predictably, he could not resist the temptation to devise a quantitative system for classifying artistic colors. His "chromatology" included the precise formulation of 2,520 shades of color.

Having given up his laboratory at Leipzig and cut off from the outside world by the war, he devised all of his equipment from scratch. His self-made tools included heating lamps, spatulas, weighing boats, and special cutters. Given his need for tools and the difficult circumstances under which he was working, he could have easily given up this quantitative project. However, as his great-granddaughter tells the story, Ostwald resolved that "I am a chemist, I can do this."

As a scientist who showed a passion for liberal arts pursuits, Ostwald proved to be a fascinating subject on the ACCEL-sponsored travel seminar. Ostwald's story provided an interesting topic of study and his "Energy House" an extraordinary setting for scientific traveling.