Jason Crawford

Um, and they also had sort of tight collaboration with university.

So Germany in the 19th century is the birthplace of the modern research university.

They kind of pioneered the model universities had been around since the middle ages or maybe longer, but, um,

they were, you know, they started off as much more kind of, they trained the clergy and people who are going to go into law and politics and doctors and stuff.

But of course, they didn't really have science at that point in like the 11th century when Oxford or whatever is getting founded.

And so the notion of the university as a place of research primarily, not even primarily a place of teaching, but where both the student and the teacher were in the service of research is really kind of a 19th century German notion.

Look up Humboldt and the University of Berlin for a reference there.

And so the German universities became these sort of research places and they got pretty good at chemistry and the chemistry companies had these close associations.

And so they sort of took off.

By the way, if you were an American in the mid to late 1800s and you wanted to get a technical education, especially in chemistry, you had to leave America.

America didn't have any good universities.

You had to go to Germany or at least somewhere in Europe, but usually Germany, get your education there and then come back.

Just like immigrants today come to American top universities and then go back to their home country.

That's what Americans were doing going to Germany for their chemical education.

So I think that was a key part of it.

And so then Germany pulled ahead in at least the chemistry industries.

And I don't know what else, but that's a key part of the story.

I don't know enough about that.

Sorry.

I don't understand relativity very well, and I don't understand Riemannian geometry at all.