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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