Chemische laboratoria in de negentiende eeuw

Nineteenth-century chemical laboratories in the Netherlands By the Royal Decree of 1815 a separate faculty of mathematics and natural science was founded at the Dutch universities of Leyden, Utrecht and Groningen. The decree emphatically stated that each of those universities should have a chemical laboratory. The teaching of chemistry was , however, of little significance. This situation changed radically when G.J. Mulder was appointed professor of chemistry at Utrecht University (1840). Mulder's ideal was to give his students a practical chemical education; for that purpose he needed an adequate laboratory which he got in 1845. With Mulder and his students a new era of chemical education at Dutch universities began. Opportunities for a chemical career were improved by the foundation of a new type of secondary school in 1863, which needed a great number of chemistry teachers. Twelve out of 36 graduate students of J.H. van 't Hoff made a career in governmental services or in private and industrial laboratories. In this article a survey is given of types of non-university laboratories existing in the Netherlands at the end of the last century: private chemical laboratories for the training of chemists outside the university and for the analysis of chemical products; governmental chemical laboratories (sugar, foods); industrial chemical laboratories (the N.V. Nederlandsche Gist- en Spiritusfabriek in Delft appointed a research chemist already in 1885), agricultural chemical laboratories and chemical laboratories at secondary schools where a number of teachers did their own chemical research. With the great expansion of Dutch chemical industry in the beginning of the twentieth century, more and more chemists found a job at the newly established industrial research laboratories