CHEMISTRY IN THE UNITED STATES. 
193 
ists had a part, but it was one of minor importance, an item 
among many. 
In the American Association for the Advancement of 
Science there were some chemists who attended the meetings 
from time to time and occasionally presented papers. They 
were overshadowed, however, by the more active representa¬ 
tives of other sciences, and their share in the proceedings was 
rarely conspicuous. The Association was divided at the time 
of which I speak into two sections, A and B, and in the first 
of these chemistry, physics, mathematics, and astronomy were 
crowded together, with chemistry the least prominent of all. 
In 1873 the Association met at Portland, and a handful of 
chemists, most of them young and unknown, but enthusiastic, 
were present. The time was ripe for a step forward, and that 
step, a very short one, was taken. The Association was re¬ 
quested to allow the formation of a subsection of chemistry; 
a year later, at Hartford, the request was granted, and the 
subsection began its career. 
Some two weeks before the meeting at Hartford, on August 
1,1874, about seventy-five chemists met at Northumberland, 
in Pennsylvania, to celebrate at the grave of Priestley the 
centennial of the discovery of oxygen. It was now proposed 
to organize an American Chemical Society, modeled after the 
already flourishing societies of London, Paris, and Berlin, but 
action was deferred in order that the new experiment in the 
American Association might have a fair trial, and that the 
danger of undue competition, with its attendant division of 
forces, might be avoided. The new subsection received 
general support; it grew and flourished, and when, in 1881, 
the American Association was reorganized it became the full 
Section C of the present body. Today the chemical section 
is one of the strongest and most vigorous in the Association; 
with a large and faithful membership, which has been built 
up in great measure by the efforts of the men who started it 
twenty-three years ago. 
In 1876 the project for an American Chemical Society was 
revived, and an organization bearing that name was estab- 
