Academic Chemistry in Imperial Germany

DID SCIENCE IN IMPERIAL GERMANY face incipient structural problems by the turn of the century? One weakness that has been pointed out was the university research-teaching institute, which was directed by a senior professor solely responsible for a large academic discipline such as chemistry. While these institutes may have sufficed for nineteenth-century science, twentieth-century science required a "modern" organization that would be at once more specialized, less hierarchical, and more open to interdisciplinary research. But by the turn of the century the obstacles facing would-be reformers of German academic institutions were so great that fundamental changes could be brought about only by creating new institutions, not by modifying existing ones. The German institute system prevailed, only to become a handicap to German scientists.