Industrial Chemistry and its Changing Patrons at the University of Liverpool, 1926-1951

This paper examines how the orientation of British universities to national problems during and immediately after World War II impacted their existing networks of local support. It draws on a range of archival material to examine how state support both reshaped the links between an individual university department and its existing industrial sponsors and destabilized its position within the university. The Department of Industrial Chemistry at the University of Liverpool is the focus of this study, which begins by outlining the department's research program and its relationship to the industrial funding it received. State support for research and its impact on both the nature of research and the links that were subsequently developed with industry are then considered. The conclusion examines how the nationalization of the university undermined the position of industrial chemistry within it and compares these developments with the much more extensively documented case of the United States.