2 - A Republican Science

Summary

Chapter 2 describes the role that chemists played in the construction of the Second Spanish Republic (1931–1939). It explores how many of them became allies of the leftist policies of the new regime, with its dreams of secularism, liberal universalism and peace, as opposed to the dark images of chemical weapons of the First World War. The freethinking rationalism of the JAE placed chemistry in a comfortable position to highlight material progress and a positivistic scientific culture as solid allies of the new Republic. Within that framework, the chapter covers the opening in 1932 of the Instituto Nacional de Física y Química (INFQ) – nicknamed ‘The Rockefeller’ after the source of funding used to create it; the university reforms in teaching and experimental chemistry; the International Conference on Pure and Applied Chemistry held in Madrid in 1934; and further attempts to link academic chemistry to industrial growth, which challenges the frequent criticism of a supposedly overly academic chemistry. Utopian dreams of material progress opposed any use of chemicals for war purposes as a sign of the internationalism of the time, which supported the invitation of foreign chemists to visit Spain, as well as the sending of large numbers of young chemists for training abroad.