text: To the published books of Ernst Homburg belong:
  *  (dissertation)
  In his dissertation, Homburg described the important transformations during the first half of the nineteenth century in the character and the organization of the chemical industries in Europe. The leading positions in the management of the factories were then for the first time taken by industrial chemists. This process, together with the formation of an occupational group of high social prestige, was especially visible in Germany. There was an important relation with the development of polytechnic education. Homburg considers the transformation of polytechnic and university chemical education more as a cause than as a consequence of the emergence of the occupation of the chemist.
  Many scholars, that wrote about the development of the chemist's occupation in the context of the development of university education, like Joseph Ben-David, Bernard Henry Gustin, Erica Hickel, Ingunn Possehl, R. Steven Turner and Ulrike Köster, had created the impression that the emergence of the chemical occupation was the exclusive result of the work of Justus von Liebig (1803-1873). The broader social perspective was lacking. No reference was made to the interplay between events in this particular domain of work and knowledge and the development of the social division of labour as a whole. Homburg tries to fill this gap in the main body of his dissertation. Especially the short period between 1830 and 1850 marked a radical change in the organisation of education. Apart from the changes in the German educational system, a "veritable revolution of the laboratory" occurred. Especially the emergence of analytical chemistry caused the development of new laboratories, with smaller apparatuses, and the possibility to give laboratory instruction a more prominent place in chemical education.
  The last part of the dissertation summarizes the new functions in which the chemically trained found their occupation. 
  *  (The history of chemistry in the Netherlands; published in 3 vols. 1993, 1997, 2004)
  *  (Growth by Fertilizer : DSM Agro 1929-2004)
  Ernst Homburg was one of the chemistry editors of: