Elizabeth Fulhame - 18th century chemistry pioneer

Did you know that the first person to propose the concept of catalysis was 18th century British chemist Elizabeth Fulhame?

In 1794, she published a book detailing 14 years of investigations into redox reactions of metal salts, focusing on ways to obtain metal-coated fabrics. The book had the charmingly specific title, “An Essay On Combustion with a View to a New Art of Dying and Painting, wherein the Phlogistic and Antiphlogistic Hypotheses are Proved Erroneous”.

In this publication, she detailed her systematic study of the topic, varying reactants and reaction conditions, in a manner that will look modern and familiar to any of us. She experimented with various reducing agents, including hydrogen gas, phosphine, and even used light to trigger reduction. The idea that metals could be processed using reducing reactions at room temperatures in water, rather than with high-temperature smelting, was revolutionary. Her work on light-sensitive salts preceded the work of photography pioneers, though she did not use the reaction to capture images.

She demonstrated that some oxidation reactions required the presence of water, which could also be detected at the end of the reaction. She therefore proposed a mechanism whereby water molecules directly participate in the reaction, and are regenerated rather than consumed – acting as a catalyst. Though her proposed mechanism was later disproved, the mere suggestion that a material can participate in a reaction, but not be consumed by it, was a revelation.

We know next to nothing about Fulhame's personal life, except that she was married to a physician, a Dr. Thomas Fulhame. Beyond this – nothing, not even her maiden name, or years of birth or death. She was reasonably well known at her time – she met Joseph Priestly in 1793, and he was impressed by her findings and encouraged her to publish them. In 1798 her work was translated into German, and in 1810 an American edition was published. In America, her results gained significant attention and praise, and she was even made an honorary member of the Philadelphia Chemical Society. A female chemist was a great rarity at the time, and was commented upon by several, such as the editor of the American edition. Lamenting that her work was not as known as it should have been, he blamed the attitudes of prominent scientists, saying that:

...the pride of science, revolted at the idea of being taught by a female.

Fulhame herself was sanguine about the topic, wittily stating in the preface to her work (italics in source):

But censure is perhaps inevitable: for some are so ignorant, that they grow sullen and silent, and are chilled with horror at the sight of anything that nears the semblance of learning, in whatever shape it may appear; and should be the spectre appear in the shape of a woman, the pangs which they suffer are truly dismal.

Fulhame wrote plainly and well, and even had the advice many of us give to our students today:

I have not related my experiments in the order in which they were made, sensible that such a narration would be tedious, and that a short extract from them would answer every purpose at present intended.

The experiments related I have endeavoured to arrange in such a manner, as mutually to illustrate each other, by contrasting the successful with those that failed, thus pointing out a general principle, which forms a chain through the whole, connects all the experiments, shews their points of coincidence and disagreement, and by this means furnishes us with data, by which I hope the art may be improved.

Reading parts of her work, I couldn’t help but feel a certain connection – especially as I read her description of reducing gold salts, and how she sometimes obtained a strong red color, and sometimes a purple one. As someone who performed many gold reductions, I almost called out – “you made plasmonic nanoparticles, and sometimes they aggregated!”.

Fulhame's book is available online as a scanned PDF (https://archive.org/details/2554047R.nlm.nih.gov) and as an HTML page: https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/fulhame/combustion/combustion.html