Mel Usselman
Professor
B.Sc., M.A., UWO.
Ph.D., UWO.
Room 072, Chemistry Building
Phone: (519) 661-2111 ext. 86308
History of Chemistry
Awards:
• UWO Pleva Teaching Award
• OCUFA Award for Teaching Excellence
• Alumni Western, Bank of Nova Scotia, University Students' Council Award
for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, March 2005
• USC Teaching Honour Roll for 1997-98, 1998-99, 2000-01, 2002-03 and 2003-04.
• Liebig-Wöhler Friendship prize for research in the History of Chemistry, Wilhelm Lewicki
Foundation and the German Chemical Society, Göttingen, Germany, June 3, 2004
Current Research Programs:
The core of my research program is an extensive and detailed study of the chemistry and scientific career of
William Hyde Wollaston (1766-1828), culminating in a full scientific biography, which would be the first such work.
Working from copies of Wollaston’s laboratory records and other contemporary documents, I have expanded my studies
to include investigation of the interaction of science with technology, pure versus applied chemistry,
late 18th-century medical practices and chemical entrepreneurship.
A central component of my research methodology is the experimental reconstruction of historic chemical discoveries.
This technique has generated novel insights into Wollaston’s method for producing malleable platinum,
Chenevix’s experiment’s on "artificial" palladium, the contributions of Dalton, Thomson, Wollaston,
Berthollet and Bérard to the law of multiple combining proportions, and most recently, Liebig’s "kaliapparat" for
the combustion analysis of organic compounds . The comparison of experimentally-obtained and published data has
initiated a recent investigation of scientific creativity, and an analysis of the difference between scientific
induction and self-deception.
Selected Publications:
“Dalton’s Disputed Nitric Oxide Experiments and the Origins of his
Atomic Theory”, Melvyn C. Usselman, Derek G. Leaist, Katherine D.
Watson, ChemPhysChem, 2008, 9, 106-110.
"Restaging Liebig: a Study in the Replication of Experiments”, Melvyn C. Usselman, Alan J. Rocke, Christina
Reinhart, and Kelly Foulser, Annals of Science, 62, 1-55 (2005).
“Smithson Tennant: the innovative and eccentric eighth Professor of Chemistry”, Melvyn Usselman, The 1702 Chair
of Chemistry at Cambridge: Transformation and Change, Mary D. Archer and Christopher D. Haley (eds),
Cambridge U. P., Cambridge, Chap.5, 113-137, 2004.
“Liebig’s Alkaloid Analyses: the Uncertain Route from Elemental Content to Molecular Formulae”, M.C.Usselman,
Ambix, 50, 71-89 (2003).
“William Hyde Wollaston’s Platinum Process: the bicentenary of the platinum industry”,
M.C.Usselman, Chemistry in Britain, December 2001, 38-40.
