Elizabeth Fulhame

Elizabeth Fulhame (fl. 1794) was a Scottish chemist who invented the concept of catalysis and discovered photoreduction. She describes catalysis as a process at length in her 1794 book An Essay On Combustion with a View to a New Art of Dying and Painting, wherein the Phlogistic and Antiphlogistic Hypotheses are Proved Erroneous. The book relays in painstaking detail her experiments with oxidation-reduction reactions. In 1798, the book was translated into German in 1798 by Augustin Gottfried Ludwig Lentin as Versuche über die Wiederherstellung der Metalle durch Wasserstoffgas. In 1810, it was published in the United States, to much critical acclaim. That same year, Fulhume was made an honorary member of the Philadelphia Chemical Society.

Her work was lesser known than it could or should have been, according to the introduction of her book by her American editor in 1810. He credited "the pride of science, 'revolting against being ... taught by a female'". Indeed, Fulhame acknowledges in her own introduction that the possessive climate of science during her historical moment balked at challenges to their "dictatorship of science" by new insight from "a woman," as recounted in a book chapter about her as the inventor of catalysis:

"But censure is perhaps inevitable: for some are so ignorant, that they grow sullen and silent, and are chilled with horror at the sight of anything that nears the semblance of learning, in whatever shape it may appear; and should be the spectre appear in the shape of a woman, the pangs which they suffer are truly dismal" (preface).(insert citation).

Fulhume published her experiments on reductions using water with metals in a book in the first place in order not to be "plagiarized." She also describes her book as possibly serving as "a beacon to future mariners" (e.g. women) taking up scientific inquiries. She drew on, and challenged, the work of chemist Antoine Lavoisier. He died six months before the publication of her book and thus could not respond to her theory. Other contemporaries include the Irish chemist William Higgins. Her research could seen as a precursor to the work of Jöns Jakob Berzelius, however Fulhume focused specifically on water rather than heavy metals.

In the 1790s, Fulhame also recorded the role of light sensitive chemicals (silver salts) on fabric, discoveries that predate Thomas Wedgwood's more famous photogram trials of 1801. Fulhame did not, however, attempt to make "images" or representational shadow prints in the way Wedgwood did, but she did engage in photoreduction using light.

Fulhume was married and published her book as Mrs. Fulhume. Her husband, Thomas, was a physician.

External links

• Book chapter, Elizabeth Fulhume and the Discovery of Catalysis
• History of Women and Science from Wisconsin University