The chemist-artist: A rich biography of Sibrand Stratingh

‘He lived a century, though he counted but half of one.’ Thus was the Groningen professor Sibrand Stratingh Ez. (1785–1841) characterised, several years after his death, in a lecture delivered at a reunion for Groningen students. An apt description, for in the just over half a century that Stratingh lived, he developed such a wealth of high-quality activity across so many different fields that his working life could easily have been divided among several people, and even then they would all have had a packed schedule.

It is equally an apt opening for De Scheikunstenaar, the biography that chemist and historian of science Ulco Kooystra, a staff member of Groningen University Library, dedicates to Stratingh. For this biography, on which Kooystra obtained his doctorate in 2021, offers considerably more than ‘merely’ a description of the life and work of this influential professor.

More histories

That alone would be more than enough to fill a substantial book, yet in De Scheikunstenaar Kooystra interweaves many further histories with the course of Stratingh’s life. It is also a history of Stratingh’s family, of the apothecary’s trade, of the university, of technological developments, of the many learned societies, of the educational system, of the broader scientific developments across Europe, of the rise of chemistry as an independent discipline, of scientific feuds and friendships, of public administration, and not least of the city of Groningen itself.

Kooystra gives the broader picture the attention it deserves

For those who know the city, it is a delight to wander through the Groningen city centre in Kooystra’s company. But even for those not yet acquainted with Groningen, the book offers a compelling and richly detailed portrait of the intellectual and social life of prosperous men (women play only a supporting role as mother/wife/daughter) in an early nineteenth-century provincial town. By adopting such a broad perspective and sweeping in so many developments and subjects in a single wide arc, Kooystra demonstrates clearly that the exceptional achievements of any one individual can always be situated within a wider environment that plays an essential part in shaping them. Nobody, however gifted and original, arrives at those brilliant insights or achievements in complete isolation.

Flourishing

Stratingh was unquestionably a highly intelligent and driven man with boldness and original ideas, yet he too was part of a larger whole within which he was able to flourish. Kooystra gives that larger whole the attention it deserves, with the result that Stratingh at times appears as merely one of many characters in his own biography. His significance and impact shimmer through the other narratives in an indirect fashion. A remarkable achievement.