The Franklin-Lavoisier Prize Presented in Paris: a History of Chemistry Celebration

At noon on a lovely day in early November, more than a thousand historians, scientists, students and chemistry professionals filled the Lavoisier auditorium in La Maison de la Chimie to see philosopher and historian Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent receive this year’s Franklin-Lavoisier Prize for her contributions to the history and philosophy of chemistry. At the same ceremony, chemist and author Armand Lattes received the first-ever honorary Franklin-Lavoisier Prize for his contributions to the history of chemistry and chemistry more generally. His award was accepted by Armand’s son Julien Lattes. All of the seats in the large theater space were taken plus many of the red velvet jump seats that fold out from both ends of each row of seats.

David Cole, President and CEO of the Science History Institute, and Phillippe Goebel, President of the Fondation de la Maison de la Chimie, presented specially cast silver medals to Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent and to Julien Lattes in a brief ceremony. The year 2024 marks the ninth presentation of the prize awarded on alternate years in America and France since 2008. The award recognizes outstanding work in the history and heritage of chemical sciences and technology, as well as efforts in the preservation or promotion of the entwined scientific culture of France and the United States. The next presentation will be at the Science History Institute in Philadelphia in November 2026. (more on the prize in a sidebar)

[The entire ceremony was in French. Quotations from the speakers are translated from their remarks.]

David Cole, President and CEO of the Science History Institute presented her medal to Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent

In his remarks, Cole said, “The Science History Institute’s mission is precisely to collect, preserve, interpret, and share the history of science and technology. Such a mission cannot of course be accomplished in isolation, and requires the collaboration of actors from the academic and industrial worlds of chemistry in the broad sense, sister organizations such as the Fondation de la Maison de la Chimie, as well as the active engagement of historians of science from around the world.”

“Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, winner of the 2024 Franklin-Lavoisier Prize, is an excellent example: at the Science History Institute, we benefited from her participation when, in 1997, she conducted an oral history of 38 hours with Stephanie Kwolek, the inventor of Kevlar.”*

In speaking of Armand Lattes, Cole said, “One of the aspects that is particularly important to us in our mission to preserve and share the history of chemistry is to better understand how science and society are articulated throughout human history. Pollution or wars are among the subjects that it is our duty to address, going beyond simplistic and polarizing discourses. And especially by examining how chemists of all times have responded to the challenges of their time. Armand Lattes, honorary laureate of the Franklin-Lavoisier Prize, is one of the “chemical deminers” if I may use this expression, an action that transcends borders and geopolitics, and gives chemical expertise a moral and peace-making role.”

Following the medal presentation, Bensaude-Vincent said, “I would first like to thank the Science History Institute and the Fondation Maison de la Chimie for this magnificent prize that rewards my modest contribution to the history of science.”

“This pleases me all the more because I have chosen a path that is scorned by my fellow philosophers. For a long time, philosophers have considered chemistry to be a negligible science, too close to everyday life, to cooking. More worthy of interest in their eyes are the grandiose theoretical questions posed by physics, or the life sciences: realism, determinism, finalism, chance and necessity ... I preferred chemistry precisely because it is an impure science. Impure not in the moral sense of corruption, but in the chemical sense of mixture: a mixture of cognitive and technical issues. Here is a field where the search for the laws governing the diversity of chemical molecules and their reactions coexist with the search for new molecules useful for pharmacy, industry, agriculture. Here is a science that deals with practical issues: air quality, water contamination, hygiene, health, etc.”

The award ceremony was held in the middle of a day-long conference on water and the environment. In her talk, Bensaude-Vincent described how Antoine Lavoisier studied water throughout his career, first assessing its composition and purity during his mineralogical travels and analysis, and later on through careful experiment showed that water is not an element (as believed by the ancients) but is composed of hydrogen and oxygen.

She closed her talk saying, “Chemists of the 21st century have to study again and again the properties and behaviors of water in order to contribute to maintaining a habitable earth despite climate disruption, and this in collaboration with scientists or engineers from other disciplines. Indeed, a distinctive mark of the chemical community—which I will emphasize to conclude—is that chemists most often work across borders, in varied professional fields, ranging from medicine and pharmacy, biotechnologies and nanotechnologies, to agriculture and heavy or fine industry, to nuclear technologies, to atmospheric and climate sciences. In most of the fields in which they practice their profession, chemists maintain a strong disciplinary identity forged by the language specific to chemistry, teaching manuals, and laboratory practices. In my eyes, the identity of chemistry is built on the model of a diaspora: a dispersed population, immersed in foreign countries that nevertheless maintains a strong cultural identity. And it is in the various fields where chemists operate that chemistry is enriched and constantly renewed.”

Reading from Armand Lattes’ remarks, Phillipe Goebel described Lattes’ career, whose modest origins initially destined him to be a fitter or a carpenter, from the time teachers advised and encouraged him to finish high school and pursue higher education to his flourishing academic career in chemistry. Lattes showed a consistent passion for teaching which culminated in publishing several highly successful textbooks but also demonstrated a taste for going beyond his mission as a university teacher by reaching out to the lay public. No surprise thus that he was called as expert in many instances both national and international including the NATO Scientific Committee where he served as chemistry expert in the late 1990’s.

Lattes has been and still is a vibrant advocate for chemistry, a science he profoundly loves and a science he believes is essential to society as a whole. The short piece “What if all Chemists quit?”, originally written in 2003 in French comes as a plea for the crucial role of chemistry in all corners of society, in the form of a nightmarish tale of science fiction in which that crucial science is no longer maintained and cultivated by its practitioners (the original piece can be found online https://culturesciences.chimie.ens.fr/thematiques/chimie-et-societe/environnement/et-si-les-chimistes-arretaient-tout). It was soon translated and disseminated widely, presently easily accessible online on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-all-chemists-quit-armand-lattes/ ; or see A. Lattes, Chem. Int., vol. 25, no. 6, 2003, pp. 16-17. https://doi.org/10.1515/ci.2003.25.6.16.

Through his career thus, and even long after, Lattes has crossed borders and connected networks, bridging academic and industrial research, managing projects across disciplines and laboratories, and initiating bilateral research projects between France and the US in the field of enhanced oil recovery for instance.

When it comes more specifically to the history of the discipline, he has particularly focused on a famous chemist, Nobel prize laureate in 1912, who worked at the Université de Toulouse several decades before him: Paul Sabatier (1854-1941). Lattes authored a biography of Sabatier published in 2019 and also unearthed a contribution of the young Sabatier in which he interpreted the “classification of the simple bodies” (that is the classification of the elements) based on his experience of the use of this classification in education. In all these capacities, concluded Goebel, the Jury of the Franklin-Lavoisier wanted to recognize Lattes’ merits and impact by awarding an honorary Franklin-Lavoisier Prize. In that sense, Lattes is a great example of the diaspora spirit of chemistry which Bensaude-Vincent identified as typical of that science.