A Canadian President for Esperanto Group

Bardorf

On July 15, 1921 the Esperanto Association of North America elected a new president. This is not the sort of thing that makes the news any more, but in 1921 it was reported in at least two newspapers, both from the District of Columbia, the Washington Post and the Evening Star. By 1921, the EANA was long out of Washington D.C. (they relocated to West Newton, Massachusetts in 1913), so it wasn’t even local news.

It was something of a first for the organization. The new president, Charles F. Bardorf was the first president of EANA who was not an American citizen. He was citizen of Canada. He was also first European immigrant to head the organization. And, he was the first chemist to lead the group. (Not sure how many, if any, seconds there were of any of these.) Charles F. Bardorf was the seventh president of the Esperanto Association of North America. The group was the Esperanto Association of North America in more than just name: from the beginning it included Canadian members and clubs, although the American side dominated it. There was also a Canadian Esperanto Association. Oddly enough some of the Canadian Esperanto groups were affiliated with the British Esperanto Association.

It hit the papers the following day, although the Post still referred to the events as happening “today.” In the Evening Star, it’s a very brief article, tucked in at the bottom of a page.

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Future Nobel Laureate Nobly Lauds Esperanto

And this is the device that
I've labeled in Esperanto.

In 1904, the British chemist, Sir William Ramsay, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery of the noble gases (note spelling). To stray far from my area of expertise, the noble gases are those that do not (typically) react with other elements. More than sixty years would elapse between Ramsay’s 1898 discovery of xenon and the 1962 creation of a xenon compound. The first noble gas discovered by Ramsay, however, was argon in 1895, when the Nobel Prizes were still five years in the future.

In addition to being the chemist who discovered argon, neon, krypton, and xenon, Sir William Ramsay was an early British Esperantist, and a member of the British Esperanto Association, which is one thing that doesn’t get mentioned on Wikipedia, although his association with Esperanto and the Internacia Scienca Asocio Esperantista is mentioned on Esperanto Wikipedia. Ramsay wrote a piece on radium which appeared in the British Esperanto magazine, The Esperantist.

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Chemists and Esperanto

Did Ramsay ever speak to
Ostwald in Esperanto?

A short item in the Aberdeen Herald of Aberdeen, Washington (not Scotland) makes a connection between Esperanto and chemistry.[1] Some of the early advocates of Esperanto were prominent chemists, including Professor Wilhelm Ostwald, whose advocacy of Esperanto helped establish a group at Harvard University. Ostwald even funded a prize for composition in Esperanto, although ironically, soon after it was given for the first time, he left the Esperanto movement and became an equally fervent supporter of Ido.[2]

But another prominent early-twentieth-century chemist remained in the Esperanto movement, Sir William Ramsey. Like Ostwald, Ramsey became an Esperantist before he became a Nobel laureate (but unlike Ostwald, was still an Esperantist at the time he received the medal). Ramsay was the first Esperantist to win a Nobel, but not the last.

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A Chemist Promotes Esperanto

Wilhelm Ostwald

The early Esperanto movement had the support of many prominent figures of the scientific world, including the great German chemist Wilhelm Ostwald. From 1905 to 1906 Professor Ostwald lectured at Harvard and Columbia. Judging from the statements made in the newspapers of the era, this kind of intentional exchange was rare, which isn’t a huge surprise for an era when traveling between Europe and the United States took a week or two.

Ostwald traveled on the SS. Blucher, which left Cuxhaven on September 21, 1905 and arrived in New York on October 2. Oswald made a series of visits to the United States, making less celebrated visits in 1903 and 1904. The shortest of these trips took a week, which made it impossible that any scientist would dash over to give a seminar on another continent and then dash back after.

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Esperanto at Harvard

The latest fad in Boston

The Congregationalist and Christian World paid scant attention to Esperanto, even though its place of publication, Boston, was something of a hotbed of early Esperanto activity during the time when it was published, during the early days of the twentieth century. However, when Harvard, which had been founded to train Congregationalist minsters, started an Esperanto group, maybe that’s what it took to get the attention of The Congregationalist. And so, on January 20, 1906, The Congregationalist and Christian World reported on Esperanto at Harvard University.

Harvard’s Esperanto group has an impressive forebear. While Wilhelm Ostwald did not found the Harvard Esperanto Society, as Ostwald visited Harvard the year before the group was founded, he did provide prize money for speeches in Esperanto. A March 21, 1906 article in the Harvard Crimson notes that the prizes will be “an Esperanto dictionary and Esperanto literature to the value of $5.” (Which seems strange because in March 1905, it was noted that the Ostwald prizes were worth $50.[1])

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Happy Ether Day!

Happy Ether Day!

If it was Ether Day on this day in 1908, then it must be Ether Day today! I stumbled across one reference, but had a hard time finding any other, though I did find a few. On October 16, 1908, the Palestine Daily Herald, of Palestine, Texas, reported on it, as did Washington Times on October 16, 1913.

What is this happy holiday and how do we celebrate it? It’s the anniversary of the first successful use of anesthesia, first done in 1846. Wikipedia points out the the chemistry challenged that the specific compound in question is dimethyl ether (CH₃OCH₃), and that ethers are a whole class of chemical compounds.[1]

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Trouble in Esperanto-Land

Get your tickets early!

1910 seemed to have both good and bad for the Esperanto movement. On the one hand, preparations were being made for the 1910 Universala Kongreso, the first outside of Europe. On June 21, 1910, the Washington Times reported that noted Brazilian musician would be giving a concert in D.C. as part of the Esperanto congress.

That was the good news.

Washington lovers of music are looking forward to a visit to the Capital in August of C. Quiririo de Oliveira, of the National Institute of Music, Rio de Janeiro. Senor Oliveira, accompanied by Joas Baptista Mello Souza, an officer in the Brazilian ministry of interior, will come to Washington for the Esperanto congress, and probably remain in the city for a week. 

At the Esperanto headquarters today it was announced that a special concert would be given during Oliveira’s stay and that the famous master of music had consented to take part in it. Both Oliveira and Souza are said to be ardent Esperantists.

Señor Oliveira might have been famous in his day, but I haven’t been able to find anything else about him.

Now the bad news.

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Gawker Commenters Restore My Faith in Humanity. And Science.

Sulfer? WTF!

A high school senior in Georgia might be kept from attending graduation over her yearbook quote. Gawker picked up the story and it ended up on the Facebook page of one of my friends. The linked news article quotes that Paris Gray as having the text with her yearbook picture as

When the going gets tough just remember to Barium, Carbon, Potassium, Thorium, Astatine, Arsenic, Sulfur, Uranium, Phosphorus.

Except that's not what it said. Instead, Ms. Gray wrote:

When the going gets tough just remember to Barium, Carbon, Potassium, Thorium, Astatine, Arsenic, Sulfer, Utranium, Phosphoros.

Which, as I type this, now have squiggly red lines underneath, reminding me that they're not spelled correctly. Isn't Phosphoros one of those countries in The Game of Thrones? I must get around to reading that. This leapt out at me!

Ms. Gray's mother passes this off as her daughter being a "nerd," but wouldn't a so-called nerd get the names of the elements right?

Happily, many of the comments on Gawker point this out as well. Thank you commenters. And congratulations on graduating high school, Ms. Gray. During the summer, maybe you could learn how to spell the names of the chemical elements.

[I'm tagging this post with #chemistry. I've been waiting to do that.]

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