Successful emancipation: the history of the Faculty of Science
A look back at the development of the Faculty of Science reflects the increasing importance of the natural sciences over the past two centuries. Initially housed under the umbrella of the Faculty of Philosophy, the natural sciences curriculum became increasingly differentiated in the nineteenth century. Institutionally, the separation first took place in 1896 with a distinct division of mathematical and natural sciences. With the University Act of 1937, two separate faculties were finally established: the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, and the Faculty of Science.
The history of the natural sciences at the University of Basel begins with two professorships. Until the eighteenth century, the chair of physics included zoology, mineralogy, metaphysics, cosmology, and later chemistry. The chair of mathematics was dedicated to arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy. Botany was assigned to the Faculty of Medicine until the nineteenth century. This early phase of Basel’s natural sciences has been little researched and is barely accessible in the literature, except for a few names, such as Heinrich Glarean or Christian Wurstisen in mathematics, or Felix Platter and Caspar Bauhin in botany. And it was not until the turn of the eighteenth century that this situation changed, with the appearance of the Bernoulli family on the university stage.
The various members of the Bernoulli family were extraordinarily important for the university’s natural sciences. Jacob Bernoulli, who held the chair of mathematics from 1687 to 1705, was first to make an impact, followed by his brother Johann Bernoulli I (1705–1748), then his son Johann Bernoulli II (1748–1790). Another of Johann’s sons, Daniel Bernoulli, was the university’s professor of physics from 1740–1782. Together with Leonhard Euler, who was educated in Basel, they were among the leading mathematicians of their time and made significant contributions to fields including calculus, probability theory, and hydrodynamics.
By the end of the eighteenth century, the natural sciences disciplines also showed clear signs of the nascent crisis at the university. The number of students declined, and the chair of physics was left unfilled. However, the ensuing discussions about reform emphasized the increased importance of the natural sciences and called for their (re)establishment and expansion at the university.
The reform of 1818: a challenging start
The initial conditions for the natural sciences at the University of Basel were quite poor following its reform and the new University Act of 1818. Until 1860, there were scarcely more than fifteen students enrolled in the Faculty of Philosophy, and in some years, none at all. However, this did not mean that there was no interest in natural sciences in Basel. On the contrary, with the Society of Natural Research, scholars outside the university had established an important forum for promoting research in the city. Initially, they saw the university not so much as a research institution but rather as an educational establishment that should serve as a continuation of the gymnasium.
With Peter Merian and Christoph Bernoulli, the university and society, research and teaching, came together. On the one hand, both were closely connected with natural research as part of the city’s social fabric; on the other hand, they were very committed to the reorganization of the university after 1818 and took over the chairs of natural history (Peter Merian) and physics (Christoph Bernoulli). They advocated for the introduction of new subjects in the Faculty of Philosophy, such as natural history, physics/chemistry, and mathematics. They moreover emphasized that university teachers should be able to conduct their own research in the future. In addition to the library, collections of instruments for physics and chemistry were established, as well as a collection of objects to be used in teaching (fossils, minerals, and specimens).
In 1849, the library and collection, as well as the natural sciences disciplines, received an impressive new building with the New Museum, as it was called, on Augustinergasse. Just twenty-five years later, the physical/chemical disciplines moved from Augustinergasse to the Bernoullianum, thereby physically manifesting their newfound self-confidence.
The beginnings of the two “divisions”
By the 1840s, it had become customary for professors Faculty of Philosophy who were in the natural sciences to meet separately from those in the other sciences to discuss matters of no immediate interest to other faculty members. This led to the operation in two “divisions,” codified by the University Act of 30 June 1866. Both divisions were restructured internally and each had its own head, with the title of dean.
Botany and zoology, two disciplines that originally belonged to the Faculty of Medicine, increasingly moved closer to the new division and eventually joined it entirely. The earth sciences also received their own institute at the end of the nineteenth century with separate divisions for geology, paleontology, and mineralogy. In 1911, a chair of geography was created through private initiative. Pharmacy in Basel was also part of the natural sciences, a unique feature in Switzerland.
In 1916/1917 and again in 1923, the relationship between the overall faculty and the two divisions was reopened for discussion, with a focus on the right of the divisions to confer doctoral degrees. This issue was presented as a pragmatic simplification of the doctoral examinations, with the respective divisional dean presiding instead of the dean for the entire faculty, as vast majority of doctorates were in the natural sciences in any case. Another topic of discussion was the affiliation of certain subjects (philosophy, pedagogy, geography) with both divisions.
The establishment of the Faculty of Science
With the University Act of 1937, which remained valid until 1995 in laying down the fundamentals of the university’s operation and its relationships with supervisory authorities, the Faculty of Science was established comparatively late – the university’s close peer institution in Freiburg im Breisgau had already taken this step in 1911. While its predecessor was called the Division of Mathematical and Natural Sciences, the name of the faculty in German – the “Philosophisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Fakultät” or “Faculty of Philosophy and Natural Sciences” – included the term “philosophical,” and subjects such as philosophy and pedagogy, as well as geography, remained officially anchored in both faculties that emerged from the Faculty of Philosophy, i.e., the historical and the natural sciences. The faculty’s newly won autonomy was also evident in its new seal, which was larger than those of the older faculties and unique in not drawing on Christian symbols.
Internal “cell division”: differentiation of the subject canon
The founding of a separate faculty for the natural sciences accelerated a process that had been manifest since the turn of the century: the increasing differentiation and specialization of the subject canon.
This cell division, as it were, led to a growing number of professorships, as well as increasing expenditure for their equipment, which in the natural sciences meant not only in assistant positions assigned to each professor but also in laboratories and in costs for equipment. The stages of the process were nevertheless often contingent in individual cases: if a full professor passed away at a certain moment, the strategy of the most promising candidate aimed not only to inherit his equipment and argue for massive expansion based on international competition and modernization but also to demand relief from entire subdisciplines. If private donors were willing to help, one chair could thus become two, or new institutes could even be created in some cases.