How Glass Changed the World

Seth C. Rasmussen is a Professor of Chemistry at North Dakota State University (NDSU) in Fargo. A native of the Seattle area, he received his B.S in chemistry from Washington State University in 1990, before continuing his graduate studies at Clemson University under the guidance of Prof. John D. Petersen. After completing his Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry in 1994, he moved to the University of Oregon to study conjugated organic polymers as a postdoctoral associate under Prof. James E. Hutchison. He then accepted a teaching position at the University of Oregon in 1997, before moving to join the faculty at NDSU in 1999. Attaining the rank of full professor in 2012, Prof. Rasmussen also spent the spring of 2018 as a Fulbright Senior Scholar and visiting professor at the Centre for Organic Electronics of the University of Newcastle, Australia.Active in the fields of both materials chemistry and the history of chemistry, his research interests include the design and synthesis of conjugated materials, photovoltaics (solar cells), NIR photodetectors, organic light emitting diodes, the history of materials, chemical technology in antiquity, and the application of history to chemical education. As author and editor, Prof. Rasmussen has contributed to books in both materials and history and has published more than 140 research papers and book chapters. His most recent monograph was The Origins and Early History of Conjugated Organic Polymers: Organic Semiconductors, Synthetic Metals, and the Prehistory of Organic Electronics (Oxford University Press, 2025). He was named a Fellow of the American Chemical Society (ACS) in 2021, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2022, and a Fellow of the History of Chemistry (HIST)division of the ACS in 2023. In 2025, his work in history was recognized with the Joseph B. Lambert HIST Award for Outstanding Achievement in the History of Chemistry. Prof. Rasmussen served as the Program Chair for HIST from 2008 to 2017, and the HIST Chair in 2021-2022. In addition, he continues to serve as the series editor for the book series Springer Briefs in History of Chemistry and Perspectives on the History of Chemistry, and as an advisory board member for the journals Chemical Science and Substantia: An International Journal of the History of Chemistry.

• Introduction.- Origins of Glass: Myth and Known History.- Early Development and Growth of Glass.- Glass During the Roman Period.- Reinventing an Old Material: Venice and the New Glass.- Glass in the West: The Introduction of Potash-Lime Glass.- Applications to Chemical Apparatus.- From Windows to Lenses: Impact on Science and Society.- Conclusions.