> 反応速度論の目的は反応速度を解析することで、反応機構や化学反応の物理学的本質を解明することにあった。

The above sentence is from the Wikipedia article
[反応速度論](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%8F%8D%E5%BF%9C%E9%80%9F%E5%BA%A6%E8%AB%96).
I don't understand the use of the particle に at the end. In scientific
writing, I expected であった or in this case である, since this field of study still
exists and is not in the past.

Could this be a typo, or is it a real grammatical construction. If the latter,
how is this structure typically used?
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particle-に
にあった instead of であった
No, it's not a typo.

That に is a location particle and the あった is the past-tense form of ある, the
inanimate existential verb. So an English equivalent would be:

> The object (...) **consisted in** (...).

On the other hand, である is a copula, thus the English version would have been:

> The object (...) **was** (...).

As to why it's にあった, not にある, that's because the sentence does seem to talk
about what the object of 反応速度論 was -- no, I mean _consisted in_ , in the past.
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answer