Abstract

MEDAN, Diego. Los Apuntes de Química de Pedro Arata y la enseñanza de la disciplina en la Facultad de Ciencias Médicas de la UBA. Hist. educ. anu. [online]. 2019, vol.20, n.2, pp.1-10. ISSN 2313-9277.

Pedro N. Arata (1849-1922) graduated at the Buenos Aires University in Pharmacy and Medicine. Identified as the most significant chemist of Argentina’s 1880 generation, his role in sustaining the quality of chemistry teaching had not been adequately investigated before. This article examined the conditions under which Arata produced his main paedagogical tool, Apuntes de Química, including the development of his academic career, the degree of recognition by the international scientific community he had reached, and the bibliographical corpus supporting each edition. The strategies applied to improve the Apuntes and to make them known among colleagues were also inspected. The comparison among editions shows the change from a plain compilation of lecture notes in book format (1890) to a treatise on General and Organic Chemistry (editions 1893 and 1901), with growing emphasis on the description of biomolecules. Both his correspondence and the dynamics of growth of his personal library suggest that to update each new edition Arata relied, nothwitstanding his epistolar contacts with foreign chemists, basically on published sources. They also show Arata’s plans to publish a Biochemistry as an appendix to the Apuntes, a project that was never realized. The publication of the Apuntes enabled Arata both to solve a paedagogical problem, and to send a message to his colleagues from abroad: science teaching was being given serious attention in Argentina.

Keywords : Chemistry, University of Buenos Aires, science teaching, personal libraries, science and development..

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