Technikatörténeti szemle 25. (2001-02)

Papers of the Third International Conference on the History of Chemistry and Chemical Industry (Budapest, 2–4 July, 1999) – First Part - Lichocka, Halina: Ignacy Mościcki (1867–1946) in the history of science and technology

HALINA LICHOCKA* IGNACY MOSCICKI (1867-1946) IN THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY Should a positivistic scientist seek somebody who carried out in science the methodological postulates of practicism he would find him in the person of Ignacy Moscicki. This talented technician, graduate of the Polytechnic School in Riga (where he had completed his studies at the Faculty of Chemical Technology) subordinated his research activities to practical utility. For him just practical utility used to give sense to scientific work and determined his choice of subjects. Utilitarianism as inspiration helped also to finance his work because concrete results would arouse interest and find sponsors. The deficiency of saltpetre The danger of the Chilean saltpetre being exhausted appeared in the last decade of the 19

th century. Saltpetre as the basic raw material for explosives was of strategic importance. It was also the main mineral fertilizer which made people anticipate a future starvation. So the scientists and industrialists were trying to find a substitute for the Chilean saltpetre, the more so that the substances necessary for the production of nitric acid, that is air and water, were at hand. The problem was taken up by the young assistant at the physics faculty in Fribourg University - Ignacy Moscicki. He started with experiments for getting nitric oxide with the methods indicated a hundred years earlier by Cavendish and Priestley and consisting in the oxidation of nitrogen in the electric arc. This particular way of producing nitric oxide was then the object of many investigations done by Berthelot, Bunzen, Crooks and others. The experiments done by Moscicki in the university laboratory indicated that it was possible to produce nitric acid from air and water on the industrial scale. So in 1901 a company called the Nitric Acid Society was formed in Fribourg. Moscicki gave up being assistant and started working at the company. The local authorities gave him free well-equipped university laboratories. The sale of the results brought the Society profits. In the laboratory synthesis of nitric acid from the air in an electric arc the absorbtion of nitric oxide is no problem. In the semi-technical and especially industrial * Institute for the History of Science PAS, Warsaw, Poland