M. Carey Lea, the Father of Mechanochemistry

Most historical reviews of mechanochemistry mention the papers of Matthew Carey Lea as the first systematic investigations on the chemical effects of mechanical action. Yet, very little is known about the person, his motivation and the details of his results. The original literature is not easily accessible and the two existing biographies (1, 2) focus on his results in photochemistry and the study of “allotropic silver,” but overlook the importance of his mechanochemical experiments. The objective of this paper is to address these shortcomings through examination of Lea’s work in mechanochemistry, by exploring how his ideas developed from observing the pressure sensitivity of photographic plates to the systematic investigations on the mechanochemical decomposition of compounds 26 years later.