The social history of chemistry as an academic discipline is dealt with in terms of competing programs of research and institutionalization, focussing on chemistry's transition from a medical curriculum to an economic and scientific context, as exemplified by universities such as Greifswald, Halle, Göttingen, and Jena in the late eighteenth century. Special attention is given to those factors that constitute, stabilize, and, eventually, re‐formulate disciplinary identity.