Wilhelm Ostwald

Wilhelm Ostwald (1853–1932) was German chemist and philosopher.

Friedrich Wilhelm Ostwald, a Baltic German, was born in Riga (then in the Russian empire, now Latvia) on 2 September [O.S. 21 August] 1853 and died in Leipzig, Germany, on 4 April 1932. He was one of the founders of physical chemistry and received the Nobel Prize in 1909. In 1906 he retired from academic life and made contributions to philosophy, art, and politics. He pioneered sabbatical leave by being the first "exchange professor" at Harvard University in 1904 and 1905.

Life and Career

Ostwald entered the University of Dorpat (now the University of Tartu, Estonia) in 1872 and had significant exposure to the humanities, the arts, and philosophy. He continued there as a research assistant and received his magister degree in 1877 and doctorate in 1878.

In 1881, Ostwald became a Professor of Chemistry at the Riga Polytechnicum (now Riga Technical University) and, in 1887, he moved to Leipzig University where he became Professor of Physical Chemistry and led the Institute for Physical Chemistry until his retirement in 1906. He had several distinguished students including Emanuel Goldberg.

This article is concerned with his involvement in documentation and information science. For all other aspects of his life and work see "Wilhelm Ostwald" Wikipedia [[1]].

Work related to Documentation

• The structure of research literatures. Ostwald wrote and edited prodigiously with a clear sense of the purpose and roles of different genres, including the reprinting of classic publications.
• International standard paper sizes. in 1911 Wilhelm√ Ostwald proposed a world format (Weltformat) based on the aspect ratio 1:√2 (approx. 1:1.414) which, when folded in half, retains the same aspect ration. This became, with minor changes the present international standard (ISO 216) including the widely used A4 size.

Die Brücke

Inspired by Paul Otlet and the International Institute for Bibliography, Ostwald co-founded, with Karl Bührer and Adolf Saager, Die Brücke - Internationales Institut zur Organisierung der geistigen Arbeit (The Bridge - International institute to organize intellectual work) in Munich on June 11, 1911. It was largely funded by Ostwald's Nobel Prize money.

The "Bridge" was intended as a central hub connecting ("bridging") all institutions, organizations, and individuals "working for culture and civilization." It was particularly concerned with standardization of paper sizes and the "monographic principle," a form of hypertext in which individual records of knowledge on card could be added, linked, and updated as a dynamic encyclopedia constituting a world brain.

Publications

• Energetische Grundlagen der Kulturwissenschaft. [Energetic foundations of sociology.] Leipzig: Klinkhardt. 1909.
• Das Gehirn der Welt. [The world brain.] Munich: Brücke.1912.
• "Scientific management for scientist. 'The Bridge.' The trust idea applied to intellectual production. Scientific American 108, no1 (Jan 4, 1913): 5-6.

Further Reading

Hapke, Thomas. "Wilhelm Ostwald, the “Brücke” (Bridge), and Connections to Other Bibliographic Activities at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century," In: Proceedings of the 1998 Conference on the History and Heritage of Science Information Systems. Ed. by Mary Ellen Bowden, Trudi Bellardo Hahn & Robert V. Williams. Published for the American Society for Information Science and Technology and the Chemical Heritage Foundation by Information Today, Medford, NJ, 1999, pp. 139-47. [[2]] Page 145: “Nevertheless, Ostwald can be seen as a predecessor of information science. Ostwald predicted the arrival of the information specialist as a consequence of the growing division of scientific work. ‘Therefore, it is ever more necessary for the news service in science, which has been organized up to now in periodicals, annual reports, and similar literary aids, to be built up in such a way that it will be managed by co-workers who are more skillful because specially trained.’ (Ostwald, 1909, p175 [Hapke's transl.])”