Chemistry under threat from war

The outbreak of war does not put an end to research in chemistry. On the contrary, as Georges Chavanne notes in a letter to Émile Tassel (Ernest Solvay’s representative on the Administrative Committee of the International Solvay Institute for Chemistry), the war enables many advances in the field of theoretical and industrial chemistry. In his opinion, it is the industrial chemists who supported, with the help of Ernest Solvay and of the Institute for Chemistry, the efforts of the Société chimique de Belgique in the field of industry.