Historical development

At the end of the 19th century Wilhelm Ostwald, Jacobus Hendricus van’t Hoff and Walter Nernst established an independent science in the common area between chemistry and physics. The main objective was the quantitative assessment of chemical processes using physical methods especially thermodynamics and kinetics. Initiated by Wilhelm Ostwald, the first society for this new science was established in 1894. Since 1902 the society has been called German Bunsen Society for Applied Physical Chemistry (Deutsche Bunsen-Gesellschaft für Angewandte Physikalische Chemie) in honour of the world famous chemist Wilhelm Robert Bunsen. Since 1950 the society has been known as the German Bunsen Society for Physical Chemistry (Deutsche Bunsen-Gesellschaft für Physikalische Chemie). Similar societies were founded only a little later in America and England : the Electrochemical Society and the Faraday Society.