Scaling Up: The Institution of Chemical Engineers and the Rise of a New Profession (Chemists and Chemistry) [Hardcover]

Colin Divall (Author), Sean F. Johnston (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 28, 2001 | ISBN-10: 0792366921 | ISBN-13: 978-0792366928 | Edition: 1

Chemical engineering - as a recognised skill in the workplace, as an academic discipline, and as an acknowledged profession - is scarcely a century old. Yet from a contested existence before the First World War, chemical engineering had become one of the 'big four' engineering professions in Britain, and a major contributor to Western economies, by the end of the twentieth century. The subject had distinct national trajectories. In Britain - too long seen as shaped by American experiences - the emergence of recognised chemical engineers was the result of professional aspirations and contingency, and shaped by a shifting ecology of institutions, firms and government. Drawing upon extensive archival research, this book examines the evolution of technical practice, working environment and social interactions of chemical engineering. It will be of considerable interest to historians, sociologists of the professions, and to practitioners themselves.

Editorial Reviews

Review

`Scaling Up is an excellent history of the chemical engineering profession in Britain and the development and growth of the Institution of Chemical Engineers. It is well laid out and the text is generally easy to read. Overall, it is a highly recommended book for anyone interested in the history of Chemical Engineering.' Bulletin for the History of Chemistry, 27:1 (2002)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 350 pages
• Publisher: Springer; 1 edition (February 28, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0792366921
• ISBN-13: 978-0792366928
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,224,348 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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4.0 out of 5 stars ChemEng Wars--Chemical Heritage magazine, March 12, 2003

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This review is from: Scaling Up: The Institution of Chemical Engineers and the Rise of a New Profession (Chemists and Chemistry) (Hardcover)

G. N. Lewis, the distinguished physical chemist and leader of the outstanding department at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1912 to World War II, famously rejected chemical engineering as a field of study, advising aspirants to take their degree in chemistry to the engineering school. The success of the discipline in America tends to obscure the reasons for such early resistance. In England, as Divall and Johnston tell us, the scars of the battle are more easily discerned: the efforts of the Institute of Chemical Engineers has continuously, since its foundation, struggled to establish the profession of Chemical Engineering in the face of industrial indifference, hostility from other engineering groups, and sporadic state support. Its war stories form the historical substance of the monograph.
The authors have chosen to cast their story in the mold of the sociology of the professions. Sociological abstractions like legitimation, jurisdiction, and colonization focus attention on those aspects of the Institution's work Thus, George E. Davis is dismissed as a founder of chemical engineering because he had nothing to do with the Institution of Chemical Engineers and had no direct successors who contributed to its professionalization. Despite this, the authors reproduced part of his Handbook of Chemical Engineering in an appendix.
Robert Hinchley, who hitched the fortunes of chemical engineering to the Ministry of Munitions programs in World War I, forged liaisons between government and designers of chemical plants that led eventually to the creation of the Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE). The midwife of its birth was the the Society of Chemical Industry, of which Davis was a founder, that set up a Chemical Engineering Group although very few of those who worked in the chemical industry styled themselves chemical engineers. The Group did not assume the roles of a professional body. It remained for the Institution to define the chemical engineer.
The lack of a petroleum refining industry and a chemical industry tradition that saw chemical engineering as a joint function of chemists and engineers, there were few industrial opportunities for employment. The royal road to recognition passed through the universities that created departments and courses of chemical engineering that established a knowledge base for the new profession. But training could not create jobs. Consequently, the IChemE sought to differentiate those who had jobs in the chemical industries and education or training to distinguish them form ordinary hands, technicians, or mechanical engineers or establishing proficiency by an examination that could elevate to associate membership those who sought to distinguish themselves from less-educated colleagues in the industry.
In order to train engineers, the concept of "unit operations," pioneered at MIT, was included in most of the new curricula of the 1920s, modified to incorporate training in mechanical and civil engineering and exclude the practice schools that were the hallmark of MIT's program. As at MIT, chemical engineering education built on physics, chemistry, and engineering, to focus on the design of equipment and plant , although each university undertaking to teach the discipline cobbled it together somewhat differently. The Institution certified university courses (so that their students could forego the associate examination) but industry paid little attention to either degrees or examinations when hiring personnel, even though many industrialists joined the Institution after its formation. For example, Imperial Chemical Industries continued to use teams of chemists and engineers, leaving the hybrid specialty to firms that could afford but one person for plant design and operation. Only the Second World War, which lifted Chemical engineers into new positions of importance for national defense, redeemed the profession by giving chemical engineers an "occupational identity." The war also created an opportunity for "colonization" of the new fields like nuclear engineering and biochemical engineering.
The Royal Charter granted to IChemE in 1957 after a decade of rapid expansion of raised it to the status of the mechanical, electrical and civil engineering societies but imposed new social responsibilities, codes of ethics, and public accountability. Trade-offs of safety for economy were explicitly made by the Institution until a disastrous explosion forced a reevaluation of the relative priorities of profit and safety. Environmental and civil rights legislation compelled greater attention to pollution and recruitment of women, if not minorities, into the profession. Its hide-bound reaction to these unpleasant realities tarnished the public image of the Institution, and led to a decline in new memberships and new students that continues. Professionalization ironically brought status at the cost of autonomy and responsibility at the cost of accountability, and like a Greek tragedy, the tale of the IChemE told here shows the price of success can be failure