Precyzyjne sformułowanie określenia "chemicy analitycy" jest oczywiście bardzo trudne w sposób ścisły. Przede wszystkim trzeba zdawać sobie sprawę, że sam termin "chemia analityczna" jest trudny do określenia, gdyż ogromna większość czynności wykonywanych przez chemików wiąże się z jakościowym, a następnie ilościowym charakteryzowaniem badanego obiektu, niezależnie od tego, jakie będą dalsze cele działania i dalsze kroki naszego postępowania. Niemniej w potocznym znaczeniu tego zwrotu chemikowi analitykowi chodzi o to, aby jak najdoskonalej określić, "z czym mamy do czynienia?", a następnie, "ile tego jest?". Dlatego prawdopodobnie spotkam się z uwagami, że wspominam badaczy, którzy poczuliby się urażeni, że zaliczyłem ich do analityków, jak też nie omawiam tych, którzy by na szerszą wzmiankę zasługiwali.
Prof. dr hab. inż. Jacek Namieśnik, prof. zw. Politechniki Gdańskiej, chemik analityk, specjalista w zakresie monitoringu i analityki środowiska i żywności, Kierownik Katedry Chemii Analitycznej Wydziału Chemicznego Politechniki Gdańskiej, Przewodniczący Komitetu Chemii Analitycznej PAN, Członek Centralnej Komisji ds. Stopni i Tytułów. W roku 2012 prof. J. Namieśnik otrzymał Medal im. J. Śniadeckiego - najwyższe odznaczenie Polskiego Towarzystwa Chemicznego dla chemików pracujących w kraju.
W bieżącym roku minęło 50 lat od dnia śmierci Wiktora Aleksandra Lampego, wybitnego chemika specjalizującego się w syntezie i analizie organicznej, bardzo uzdolnionego ucznia prof. Stanisława Konstaneckiego z Uniwersyetu w Bremie. Wiktor Lampe należał do pokolenia organizatorów studiów chemicznych w odrodzonym Uniwersytecie Warszawskim, był też jednym z członków-założycieli Polskiego Towarzystwa Chemicznego. Nie do przecenienie są jego zasługi w doprowadzeniu do wybudowania nowoczesnego gmachu chemii i usilnych zabiegów o jego odbudowę ze zniszczeń wojennych.
Franciszek Scheidt (1759-1807), who had obtained his doctorate from the Jagellonian Univesristy in Cracow in 1779, began work at the University in 1785, first as a collaborator of Jan Jaśkiewicz, and then as a professor of Natural History in his own right. In 1805 Scheidt accepted an invitation from Tadeusz Czacki and went to Krzemieniec, to teach at the newly established Wołyń Gymnasium. His dutes as teacher of Natural History included courses of botany, zoology and mineralogy, as well as the organization of a Botanical Garden. He also brought his book collection to Krzemieniec, which in 1807 he sold to the Gymnasium. The book collection formed the basis for the natural history section of the Krzemieniec Library, whore book collection was quite big, but which had hitherto been rather poorly stocked in natural history. A catalogue made for the conclusion of the deal has been preserved (library of the Academy of Science of the Ukraine, Maniscripts Section, number I 6433-6466, Scheidt Collection). The catalogue gives us an insight as to what books made up Scheidt’s library. It also provides us with information on the scientific and didactic background of the professor, his reading and his interests, and also informs us about the pace at which worldwide scientific ideas were received in Scheidt’s scholarly enviroment. Cracow. As Scheidt moved to Krzemieniec, he brought this wealth of books and ideas along with him, thus forging a link between the naturalists of Cracow and the florists of the Krzemieniec school. Scheidt’s book collection consisted of 336 titles in 943 volumes. Natural and exact sciences predominated among the books: there were 92 titles dealind with physics and chemistry, 34 with mineralogy, 33 with zoology and 67 with botany. Among them were a significant number of old prints, some of exceptional value, as well as many of the most recent books of the period. There were many books in Polish and the latest foreign publications. The collection also included journals, maps and dictionaries. Significantly, Scheidt’s collection contained a large number of historical books, belles lettres, and Roman classics. There was a large collection of books by Linneus. Scheidt did not yet take an interest in de Jussieu’s natural metod, and there is a predominance of theoretical works over works dealing with particular faunas and floras, or over monographies of particular species. Many books were devoted to the physiology of plants, interpreted in very chemical terms. The contents of his library correspond closely to the curriculum of Scheidt’s courses in Krzemieniec. The library, which was representative of the Enlightenment type of erudition, was later supplemented by Scheidt’s successors with books on botany, in keeping with the studies that were conducted in Krzemieniec.
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In his life - in this part of Europe where the wars, foreign occupations, changes of frontiers and of political systems intervened again and again - these external events heavily influenced the scientific and pedagogical activities of the eminent scholar, prof. Wiktor Kemula (6.III.1902-17.X. 1985). PhD student and later successor of prof. Stanisław Tołłoczko in Lwow (starting his research mostly in photochemistry of alkanes), W. Kemula became inspired for most of his life by his post-doc work with prof. Jaroslav Heyrovsky in Prague. The polarography and analytical chemistry were henceforth the main field of his interest and research. His fast academic career (at the age of 37 he became full professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Warsaw) was interrupted for 6 years by the outbreak of the World War II. Most of his pre-war co-workers were killed, the Soviet frontiers were shifted westward, leaving Lwow out of the Polish borders, and the Warsaw University Chemistry building was in ruins. Several years of activity of prof. Kemula were sacrified to restoring the normal teaching and research. In 1946 he led 250 Polish students to work in the Copenhagen laboratories for the Danish vacation time. For many years he was suspected and harassed by the communist regime. He became the vice-rector of the University of Warsaw only in the period of a political thaw in 1956. To the most known achievements of Wiktor Kemula and his group belong the new instrumental methods, chromato-polarography and the cyclic voltammetry with a hanging mercury drop electrode In 1968 he was fired by the authorities from the University, deprived any contact with teaching and with the students; his name was for years prohibited by the censorship to be published by the media. He headed afterwards only his pure-research laboratory in the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences. The University begged his pardon and delivered him the doctor h.c. degree only at the period of th zfirst „Solidarity”, in 1981. In spite of all that, Wiktor Kemula gained a great public and international recognition for his research and activities, becoming, i.a., the honorary President of the Polish Chemical Society, President of the Warsaw Learned Society, and the President of the Analytical Division of IUPAC. Fully active till the end, Wiktor Kemula suddently died - entering the church, where the choir was just starting to sing the Mozart’s Requiem. He left over 400 papers, and from among of his PhD students over 30 became university professors. They continue the research in the fields inspired by their onetime teacher.
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Prof. W. Kemula had a pronounced experimental and practical skill. He succeeded in his fast academic career: at the age of 34 he became associate professor and head of the chair in Lwow, at 37 he was full professor and head of the chair in Warsaw. After his post-doc work with J. Heyrovsky in Prague, he and his school contributed much to polarography. His school persisted after his death, what is seldom met. Kemula was very loyal towards his teacher, St. Tołłoczko; by many decades he continued to publish subsequent editions of the Inorganic Chemistry textbook, always as Tołłoczko & Kemula, although there was nearly nothing remaining from the original text. Kemula belonged to the most cited Polish chemists. He had many friends, but also some envious foes. The cooperation within the editorial board of the main Polish chemical journal, „Roczniki Chemii“ (specially under communist censorship), and within the Polish Chemical Society, are described.
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Professor Wiktor Kemula, recognizing the importance of chemical analysis for the economic progress of the society, systematically applied new achievements of physical chemistry to the analytical procedures. After having successfully developed the chromatopolarography, he tried to apply varous types of sorbents for chromatographic separations. Application of clathrates, or inclusion compunds, as the sorbents led to the clathrate chromatography', where the separation of the guests depended mostly on their geometric fitting to the host cavities. Recognition of the structures of the clathrates, of the mechanisms of sorption, the separations of isomers, specially of the aliphatic and aromatic nitrocompounds, were at the time notable achievements. Other principles of detection - adsorption-sensitive AC polarography - allowed to W. Kemula and his coworkers to widen the scope of the method to many electro-inactive compounds. Being formally long retired, he worked out new ideas of elektrokinetic detection, and left it to his students. In the early 80th he was active in starting the series of symposia on supramolecular chemistry, and was one of the founders of the Journal o f Inclusion Phenomena. Every few years he introduced in his laboratory new methods - thermogravimetry, X-ray structural investigations. His ideas are continued and modernized by his onetime students, in the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences. The clathrates were slowly replaced by the cyclodextrines, which permitted to develop a new field - chiral separation, very important and prospective in the analysis of drugs or food additives.
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The period activity of Professor Wiktor Kemula in science coincided with the rapid development of chemistry, and particularly of electrochemistry and analytical chemistry. His early stay in the Herkovsky’s laboratory in Prague was specially fruitful in further research fields of Kemula. He contributed to several fundamental electrochemical concepts and later, in Lwow and in Warsaw, this was the main trend in his work. Among the main achievements are usually mentioned the creation of the new analytical techniques: chromato-polarography and the cyclic voltammetry with the stationary mercury drop electrode. The former, which combines the elements of separation and determination techniques into one coherent system, can be treated as a prototype of contemporary common coupled (or hyphenated) techniques, which became nearly a standard in complex analytical investigations. The latter developed continuously since the initial Kemula works, and is now termed stripping (or inverse) voltammetry. It is one of the most sensitive electroanalytical techniques, one of the cornerstones in inorganic trace analysis. In analytical chemistry Professor Kemula has foreseen that the quality problem is the basic one and has indicated the necessity of controlling the analytical results by parallel determinations using basically different methods. He also paid much attention to the study of analytical procedures, which, beside of sound theoretical basis, should found an immediate application in practice. Professor Wiktor Kemula was also much interested in teaching at the University, being involved in lecturing, inspecting the students laboratories, and improving the teaching programmes. He laid foundation of the Committee on Analytical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences, being its Chairman, and was a co-organiser of the Polish journal on analytical chemistry „Chemia Analityczna” and for many years its Editor-in-Chief.
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