Is IB Chemistry truly international? When I worked just in the British system teaching A level Chemistry I did not realise at the time how anglocentric my view of Chemistry was. I only used British (as opposed to US, Canadian or Australian etc.) books. ‘Dot and cross’ diagrams were the norm for drawing what I now call Lewis structures as was expanding the octet for molecules such as sulphur dioxide and sulphur trioxide (note the ph spelling of sulfur too!). I also learned names such as Dalton, Davy, Priestley and Faraday as the pioneers of Chemistry. Working with international students and setting examinations for both the International Baccalaureate and the European Baccalaureate has widened my horizons considerably and made me realise that Chemistry is perceived differently in different countries. Recently, though, I have realised that both the IB and the EB are not really ‘International Chemistry’. They are in fact ‘western Chemistry’.

Kazakhstan is now an independent country but it used to be part of the USSR. The president of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, has given his backing to setting up twenty specialist schools called the JSC “Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools”. These schools will specialise in the sciences and maths and will be trilingual (Kazakh, Russian and English). The proposed Chemistry syllabus has been drawn up by some very eminent Kazakh chemists and is very impressive. I have been asked to visit Kazakhstan in order to review the programme and make constructive suggestions to bring it into line with international standards so that it will be accepted as a university entrance qualification worldwide. I have found it fascinating to look at a programme which has been put together by chemists who essentially learned their chemistry dominated by USSR culture. Of course much of the actual chemistry is the same, but its cultural context is different. Let me give just one example. In the West we know of Mendeleyev and Markovnikov but generally Russian chemists do not readily spring to mind. Throughout the Kazakh syllabus there are references to A.M. Butlerov. I must confess that I have never heard of Butlerov so I thought I would look him up. It seems that he is little known in the West. Wikipedia only has a very small entry and the ‘latest’ article in a western journal about Butlerov is dated 1940. In 1978 (the 150th anniversary of his birth) a tribute was published in the Russian Chemical Bulletin. There is also a translated article available from the Russia-Infocentre.

Alexander Mikhaĭlovich Butlerov (1828-1886) was born in the town of of Chistopol near Kazan which lies at the confluence of the Volga and Kazanka Rivers in Russia. He became a professor of Chemistry at Kazan University and later (on the recommendation of Mendeleyev) at St Petersburg University where Markovnikov was one of his students. For some reason the name of Butlerov seems to have been ‘airbrushed’ out of western chemical culture and yet his achievements are of immense importance. Butlerov was the first person to realise that structural formulas should not just be an abstract image of a molecule but they should represent the true structure and that each organic compound is made of molecules that have their own specific structure. He reasoned that studying the chemical properties of substances can lead to their chemical structure and vice versa. This is something we now take for granted and yet it is crucial for the understanding of organic chemistry. Using this logic he was able to predict the existence of many new organic compounds. For example, he was able to synthesise isomers of butanol and pentanoic acid¹ (known then as ‘valeric acid’) which were predicted by his theory. Perhaps we should be asking why we in the West remember Kekulé for determining just one structure – the structure of benzene- but ignore Butlerov who arguably made a much greater contribution to organic chemistry. In Kazakhstan and Russia he is known as ‘The creator of the theory of chemical structure’.

¹As an exercise for your students you might like to ask them how many isomers of pentanoic acid (which must contain the –COOH group) they can find. The article in Russia-Infocentre states there are four but I can find five – four structural isomers but one of them has a chiral carbon atom.