Visible work: the role of students in the creation of Liebig's Giessen research school

Abstract

Historians have generally confined Liebig's students and assistants to a peripheral role in the development of his Giessen laboratory. This paper argues that these young chemists were essential to Liebig's early success, fulfilling his need for experimental work and producing the apparently independent publications which established the credibility of his new method of organic analysis. Liebig's students and assistants embodied a particular solution to the provision of technician labour and they show us that the technician's role vastly transcends the merely manipulative. The technician, just as much as the scientist, has a history—albeit one that remains largely untold.