GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

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GREAT DISCOVERIES BY
YOUNG CHEMISTS

GREAT DISCOVERIES

BY
YOUNG CHEMISTS

JAMES JCENDALL

M.A.., D.SC., LLJD.., F.R.S.

Professor of Chemistry in the University of Edinburgh
President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh

THOMAS Y. GROWELL COMPANY

NEW YORK

First printed 1953

Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 54-10375

Printed in Great Britain

Q

' >v ' - ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

THE author desires to thank the following (in addition to those men
tioned elsewhere in the text) : The Mews Chronicle (for the plate facing
p. 224) and British Paramount News (for the accompanying inset). The
Royal Institution (for prints from their copy of the newsreel, for illustra
tions facing pp. 5, 36, 72, for the portrait of Van *t HofF facing p. 117, and
for figures on pp. 35, 38, 65, 66, 67). Mr Thomas Martin (for the
illustration facing p. 20). The Bettman Archive, New York (for
illustrations facing pp. 21, 200). Appleton-Century Publishing Co.
(for permission to use the illustration facing p. 21). The Society of
Dyers and Colourists (for lending the blocks for the illustrations facing
PP- 73* 8 ; from F. M. Rowe, * Perkin Centenary Lecture, 5 J. Soc.
D. & C., 1938). Institut fur Gerbereichemie, Darmstadt (for the
illustration of Kekule facing p. 117. Verlag Ghemie, Berlin (for the figure
on p. 95). Librairie Larousse, Paris (for the illustration facing p. 116).
Mademoiselle five Curie (for the illustrations facing p. 172 and the second
one between pp. 172-173). The National Magazine Go. Ltd., 28/30
Grosvenor Gardens, S.W.i (for permission to use the illustration facing
p. 1 73) . The proprietors of Punch (for permission to reproduce Figure 23) .
The Royal Society of Edinburgh (for lending the blocks for the illustra
tions facing pp. 1 80, 181). Edgar F. Smith Collection, University of
Pennsylvania (for illustrations facing pp. 21, 200). Dr Otto Reinmuth,
Chicago University (for assistance in obtaining the illustrations facing
p. 201). Aluminiurn Company of America, Pittsburgh, Pa. (for the
picture of the aluminium statue facing p. 201). General Electric Co.
Ltd., Magnet House, Kingsway, W.C.2 (for photographs from which
figures 28, 29 were drawn). Crompton, Parkinson, & Co., Bush House,
Aldwych (for photographs from which Figures 30, 3 1 were drawn). The
Print Room, British Museum (for the youthful portrait of Edward the
Seventh facing p. 216). Dr A. G. Langmuir, Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y.
(for the portraits facing pp. 208, 209) .

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CONTENTS

I Humphry Davy I

n Michael Faraday 33

m Some Young Organic Chemists 69

iv The French Faraday and the Dutch Davy 99

v The Chemistry of Solutions 124

vi Elements Old 139

vn And Elements New 159

vm The First Chemical Society and the First

Chemical Journal 181

ix Some Young American Chemists 195

x A Young Royal Chemist 222

Index 229

LIST OF PLATES

The Alchemist Facing page 4

Humphry Davy at the age of twenty-three 5

A stance at the Royal Institution in 1801 20

The effects of Laughing-gas 2 1

Sir Humphry Davy in 1821 36

Michael Faraday in 1830 37

Faraday lecturing at the Royal Institution 72

Perkin at the age of fourteen 73

Perkin at the age of twenty-two 80

Archibald Scott Couper 81

Pasteur as a student at the cole Nonnale 116

Kekule in 1862 117

Van 't Hoffas a student in Bonn 117

Svante and Sven Arrhenius, 1913 132

Arrhenius as a student in Upsala 132

J. A. R. Newlands 140

W. L. Bragg, 1915 140

Dmitri Ivanovitch Mendelejeff 164

H. G. J. Moseley 164

The future Madame Curie and her sister Bronya, 1886 172

Vanity Fair cartoon of Pierre and Madame Curie 1 72-3

Madame Curie and her daughter Irene Joliot-Curie 172-3

Frederic Joliot and Irne Joliot-Curie 1 73

The Title-page of the First Chemical Journal 180

The Title-page to Paper 16, by Mr Haliday 181

James Woodhouse 200

Robert Hare 200

Etching of Charles M. Hall at Oberlin College 201

X LIST OF PLATES

Aluminium statue of Charles M. Hall 201

Irving Langmuir in Paris, 1893 208
Irving Langmuir showing his nephews how to use

a slide-rule 209

* What next ? 5 asked Edison 209
The future King Edward the Seventh at the age

of eighteen 216

The boiling- lead experiment 224

INTRODUCTION

THIS volume was originally published in the form of e a
Christmas Course of Lectures adapted to a Juvenile
Auditory' delivered at the Royal Institution in 1938. The
present edition involves a number of radical changes. In
the first place, it has been found that the detailed descrip
tion of many of the experiments carried out during the
lectures cannot be properly appreciated by those who have
not actually witnessed their performance, and interrupts the
main stream of the story. The book has therefore been
recast throughout from lecture into narrative style* In the
second place, the discussion has been brought up to date
wherever it touches upon present-day topics, notably in the
account of the discovery of atomic fission and the conse
quences thereof. And thirdly, an entirely new chapter has
been inserted, a chapter describing the first chemical society
in the world and the first chemical journal in the world,
both due to young chemists.

Until I worked up the material for my Royal Institution
Lectures in detail, I did not fully appreciate what a pre
dominant part young chemists have played in the develop
ment of their science. It was with some surprise that I
finally recognised that there are, indeed, very few significant
discoveries in chemistry not due to 'juveniles. 5 If anybody
doubts this, let him attempt to outline the contents of a
volume entitled Old Chemists and Great Discoveries, taking a
very liberal point of view with regard to the first adjective.
If c old * means over seventy, or even over sixty, the book
would be practically all cover ; if over fifty-five, it would
still be very slim. Reduction of old age to fifty would help
somewhat, but the available material would still be rather
scrappy and second-rate. Not only have young men and
women made most discoveries in chemistry, but those dis
coveries have been the greatest.

zi

xii INTRODUCTION

The reader may find it of interest to confirm for himself
how, in almost every instance treated in the following pages,
the creative period has been the period of early youth.
The subsequent careers of my various youthful heroes have
been described in order to round out the story, but there is
generally little to tell. Only with a genius of the extreme
classical type, such as Faraday, or Pasteur, or Langmuir,
do the flowers of later development rival the first blossoms.

To emphasise the juvenile exploits of my heroes and
heroines, I have endeavoured to select, as far as possible,
accompanying portraits of them in their youth. Some of
the early photographs employed do not give perfect repro
duction, but I feel that in this volume at least a whole
gallery of greybeards would be entirely out of place. The
few later pictures that I have been forced to include will
suffice as contrast.

More extended biographies of Davy and Faraday will
be found in my books Humphry Davy : ' Pilot ' of Penzance
and Michael Faraday : Man of Simplicity (Faber and Faber).

I wish to record my sincere thanks to my younger
daughter, Alice Rebecca, whose shorthand notes of my
lectures helped materially in the preparation of the original
manuscript, and to my elder daughter, Isabella Jean, who
has been an invaluable aid to me in the present revision.

JAMES KENDALL

EDINBURGH, November 1952

CHAPTER I
HUMPHRY DAVY

CHEMISTRY is essentially a youthful science and a science
for youth. It has its foundations, it must be confessed, in
the very ancient art of alchemy, but as a true science it is
only between a hundred and fifty and two hundred years
of age. One scientific historian, Adolphe Wurtz, has made
the definite statement that chemistry was founded by
Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, the leader of the chemical
revolution against the false doctrine of phlogiston, who
perished himself on the guillotine during the French
Revolution in 1794. In this country, however, many prefer
to regard as the father of modern chemistry Joseph Black,
professor at the University of Edinburgh, who first made the
subject an exact science by his constant appeal to the
balance in experimental work. Lavoisier learned much
from his correspondence with Black, but did not always
recognise Black's discoveries as independent from his
own.

Two hundred years is a short span in the history of human
thought, and chemistry today still shows itself to be in the
adolescent stage of its development as a science it is still
in a state of rapid growth. Advances in chemical knowledge
follow one another so quickly, indeed, that each generation
of chemists finds itself considerably ahead of the preceding
one ; any schoolboy now has the opportunity of under
standing much more chemistry than Davy or Faraday ever
knew. This, to the enthusiastic beginner, is perhaps the
greatest fascination that the science affords. No young
artist expects to rival Rembrandt, no young poet anticipates
that he will ever rank with Shakespeare ; each has to start
his own work from scratch. The young chemist, on the
other hand, can begin where his famous predecessors ended

2 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

their progress into the unknown, and himself explore some
section of the regions beyond. He is not even, as his elders
are, embarrassed with the burden of outmoded theories and
preconceived ideas ; he can strike boldly forward. Every
teacher of experience in chemistry cheerfully recognises his
own inferiority to his more gifted disciples ; the author
himself is certain that many of his former students in
Edinburgh and in New York are already in front of him
ha the onward march of scientific research.

All through the period from Black and Lavoisier to the
present day, in point of fact, we find young chemists in the
very van of progress. The major discoveries in chemistry
have almost all been discoveries due to youthful genius,
discoveries made by young men or women in their teens
or twenties ; relatively few have been the work of those past
the prime of life. The alchemist of the fifteenth century may,
perhaps, have justified the popular conception of him as an
old man, either excessively hairy or excessively hairless,
gazing into a crucible in quest of gold or the elixir of perpetual
youth. The leaders in chemistry in more recent times,
however, have found many elements of much greater im
portance than gold, and have not needed to search for
youth they have possessed it already.

It is the purpose of the author, in this volume, to narrate
the wonderful achievements of a number of brilliant young
chemists. Their early life and struggles will be outlined,
some of their epoch-making experiments will be described,
the influence of their work on the development of modern
chemistry will be indicated, and frequent illustrations will
be made of the practical application of their discoveries to
the benefit of the human race. The last point is one
of particular importance since, although these youthful
enthusiasts were not consciously seeking riches for them
selves in the course of their inspired labour in the
laboratory, the results of that labour have been of
inestimable value to mankind. As Huxley remarked
in 1877 :

HUMPHRY DAVY 3

I weigh my words when I say that if the nation could purchase
a potential Watt, or Davy, or Faraday, at the cost of a hundred
thousand pounds down, he would be dirt-cheap at the money.
It is a mere commonplace and everyday piece of knowledge that
what these men did has produced untold millions of wealth, in
the narrowest economical sense of the word.

To fill the role of the hero for this first chapter, no more
fitting choice could be made than that of Humphry Davy.
At the age of twenty-three he had already achieved such
astonishing discoveries in chemistry that he was appointed
to the position of Professor of Chemistry at the Royal
Institution, and through the charm of his lectures delivered
in its theatre immediately became the rage of London. No
matinee idol of the last generation, no film star of the
present day, ever created such a furore as this young c Pirate
of Penzance ' when he first burst upon the delighted metrop
olis. ' Those eyes were made for something more than
poring into crucibles/ said the fashionable ladies who
swarmed to his lectures, and his desk was littered with
anonymous sonnets from his fair admirers. Davy was justly
styled c the first philosopher of his age/ but could any
greater contrast from the customary conception of a dry-as-
dust and aged recluse possibly be imagined ?

The main facts regarding the life of Humphry Davy are
given in detail in his brother's biography, which tells * how,
from a comparatively humble origin, solely by his own
exertions and abilities, he raised himself to distinction and
acquired a name and reputation which, from its connection
with science, can hardly be less permanent than science
itself.'

He was born of old yeoman stock at Penzance, Cornwall,
on 17 December 1778, the eldest son of a father who was a
skilful wood-carver, c too fond, for the welfare of his family,
of making experiments in farming and of engaging in the
hazardous concern of mining. 5 His mother, an orphan
child, had been generously maintained until her marriage
in the home of a doctor, John Tonkin, who had attended

4 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

her dying parents ; we shall meet this same Dr Tonkin
again later.

In the style of the old-fashioned nursery story, seven
fairies may be imagined as coming to the cradle of the
infant Humphry, each bestowing upon him her own par
ticular blessing. The first promised that he would be a
fine poet, the second that he would be a clever writer of
essays and novels, the third that he would be c the complete
angler/ the fourth that he would be a wide traveller, the
fifth that he would be a man of fashion and a society idol,
the sixth that he would be famous in the medical profession,
and the seventh that he would be the greatest chemist of
his time. As years went by, all of these blessings came as
fairy blessings must to fruition, but the seventh fairy was
evidently the most potent and her gift ultimately outweighed
all the rest.

As a boy at Penzance and Truro Grammar Schools,
Davy showed little promise of his later ability, in fact c he
was more distinguished out of school and by his comrades
than by any great advance in learning. 3 He himself remarked
later : e I consider it fortunate that I was left much to myself
as a child, and put upon no particular plan of study, and that
I enjoyed much idleness at Mr Goryton's school.' This
idleness frequently led to painful consequences, for Mr
Coryton was an adept with the flat ruler and is reported to
have been in the habit of reciting the following verses while
inflicting punishment upon his lazy scholar, * suiting the
action to the rhythm ' :

Now, Master Davy,
Now, Sir, I have J e ;
No one shall save J e,
Good Master Davy !

Whether this played any part in fostering Humphry's early
love of poetry is not related, although it tempts one to
speculate upon a possible connection between the modern
dearth of youthful poets and the abandonment of corporal

(969)

The Alchemist

This, one of the finest of alchemical pictures, is attributed to
Edmund Hellmer

Humphry Davy at the age of twenty-three
From the painting by H. Howard

HUMPHRY DAVY 5

punishment. In any event, such talents as Davy did exhibit
at this period were mainly literary. Like his contemporary.
Sir Walter Scott, subsequently his close friend, he first
became popular with his comrades as a * tale-teller ' not,
of course, in the present significance of the word. His
assistance was often requested by boys much older than
himself in composing verse, he shone pre-eminently in
writing valentines and love letters, and he first showed his
fondness for experimenting in making fireworks. His taste
for fishing appears to have been almost instinctive.

He left school at the age of fifteen, and seems to have
led an idle and unsettled life for a year. Then, suddenly,
he was called to face realities by his father's death, which
left the family (a widow and five young children) in very
straitened circumstances. Under the advice of the old
friend of the family, Dr Tonkin, he was apprenticed in
February 1795 to Mr Bingham Borlase, a man of talent,
then practising as surgeon and apothecary in Penzance.
Dr Tonkin, no doubt, expected that Humphry would
eventually succeed to his own general practice in his native
town. The lad himself had higher ideas ; he looked forward
to graduation at the medical school at Edinburgh and a
career as a distinguished physician. How seriously he
realised his responsibilities may be seen from the following
4 plan of study ' that he drew up for himself at this period,
transcribed verbatim from one of his note-books which has
been preserved.

1 Theology

Or Religion ] [taught by Nature

Ethics, or moral virtues J" 1 by Revelation

2 Geography

3 My Profession 5 Language

1 Botany i English

2 Pharmacy 2 French

3 Nosology 3 Latin

(969) 1

O GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

4 Anatomy 4 Greek

5 Surgery 5 Italian

6 Chemistry 6 Spanish

7 Hebrew
4 Logic

6 Physics

1 The doctrines and properties of natural bodies

2 Of the operations of nature

3 Of the doctrines of fluids

4 Of the properties of organised matter

5 Of the organisation of matter

6 Simple Astronomy

7 Mechanics 9 History and Chronology

8 Rhetoric and Oratory 10 Mathematics

This represents, truly, an ambitious programme for a
boy of sixteen to undertake, and it may be doubted whether
much progress was made in some of the subjects cited, such
as Nosology x and Hebrew. The doubt increases when it
is discovered, from other note-books of Davy surviving from
this same year, how much time he devoted to one topic not
specifically mentioned on the plan at all poetry. Here,
as an example, the last few quatrains of a long poem entitled
The Sons of Genius may be quoted :

Like the tumultuous billows of the sea
Succeed the generations of mankind ;
Some in oblivious silence pass away.
And leave no vestige of their lives behind.

Others, like those proud waves which beat the shore,
A loud and momentary murmur raise ;
But soon their transient glories are no more.
No future ages echo with their praise.

1 This, according to the dictionary, is * the science dealing with the classi
fication of diseases. 3

HUMPHRY DAVY 7

Like yon proud rock, amidst the sea of time,
Superior, scorning all the billows' rage,
The living Sons of Genius stand sublime,
The immortal children of another age.

For those exist whose pure ethereal minds,
Imbibing portions of celestial day,
Scorn all terrestrial cares, all mean designs,
As bright-eyed eagles scorn the lunar ray.

Theirs is the glory of a lasting name,
The meed of Genius, and her living fire ;
Theirs is the laurel of eternal fame,
And theirs the sweetness of the muse's lyre.

This may not be first-class poetry, but it is very creditable
versification, and it was considered meritorious enough by
Wordsworth and Coleridge, who became acquainted with
Davy a few years later, to be included in their Annual
Anthology for 1799. Coleridge, indeed, was wont to declare
subsequently : c If Davy had not been the first chemist, he
would have been the first poet of his age/ but this statement
must be regarded as more cogent evidence of the loyalty of
his friendship than of his critical acumen. The best of
Davy's poetry, it must be confessed, is strongly reminiscent
of Wordsworth in his most pedestrian moments.

Chemistry, however, soon became his supreme pre
occupation. He did not begin to study the subject seriously
until he was just entering upon his nineteenth year, but
previous to that, when he should have been preparing
medicines in the surgery, he had formed the habit of practis
ing spectacular experiments in the garret which he occupied
as a bedroom in Dr Tonkin's house, his sister functioning as
his assistant with occasional disasters to her dress from
corrosive substances. His apparatus consisted chiefly of
phials, wine-glasses and tea-cups, tobacco pipes and earthen
crucibles ; when he needed a fire he was obliged to come
down to the kitchen. On more than one occasion an
explosion occurred which evoked from the worthy doctor

8 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

such expressions as : c This boy Humphry is incorrigible ! 5
4 Was there ever so idle a dog ? ' 'He will blow us all into
the air ! ' But ' Sir Humphry,' as his benefactor called him
in prophetic jest, was always indulgently allowed to continue
his c researches.'

Two friends whom he made at this time turned his
thoughts towards chemistry in real earnest. Davies Giddy,
a wealthy Cornish landowner with a keen interest in science,
is stated to have first noticed Davy c pulling faces 3 while
swinging on a gate. He asked who that extraordinary-
looking boy might be, and was informed that it was young
Davy, the wood-carver's son, who was said to be fond of
making chemical experiments. ' Chemical experiments ! *
exclaimed Mr Giddy with much surprise ; c if that be the
case, I must have some conversation with him.' As a result
of this conversation he invited Humphry to his house,
offered him the use of his library, and took him to see the
chemical laboratory at a neighbouring copper-works. The
tumultuous delight with which Davy examined common
pieces of apparatus, previously known to him only as pictures
in books, surpassed all description. Little could anyone
have suspected, at this stage of their acquaintance, that some
day the poor wood-carver's son would repay the wealthy
landowner for his kindness by nominating him as his suc
cessor for the position of President of the Royal Society of
London !

Davy's second friend was Gregory Watt, son of the famous
James Watt, who, forced to abandon his scientific studies at
the University of Glasgow through ill health, came to the
kindlier climate of Cornwall to recuperate, and stayed as a
lodger in the house of Mrs Davy. The two young men soon
became closely attached to each other, Gregory's interest
being first aroused by Humphry's undertaking c to demolish
the French theory of chemistry in hah an hour. 5 No doubt
the pair subsequently held many long discussions on this
absorbing topic.

Davy had, at this point, read only two books on chemistry

HUMPHRY DAVY 9

Nicholson's Dictionary and Lavoisier's Elements. Within a
few months he had grown bold enough to believe that he
could amend the great Lavoisier's brilliant theory of com
bustion (that substances, when they burned, combined with
the oxygen of the air), which had recently overthrown the
old phlogiston theory (that substances, when they burned,
lost a material of negative weight, phlogiston). Through
Mr Giddy and Mr Watt he entered into correspondence on
the subject in April 1798 with Dr Beddoes of Bristol, and his
vivid description of the speculations which he had made
c On the Nature of Heat and Light ' and of the experiments
which he had performed to verify those speculations soon led
Beddoes to declare his whole-hearted conversion to Davy's
beliefs.

In all probability, Beddoes was much more directly
interested from the very start in another line of investigation
that Davy was then pursuing the effect of nitrous oxide on
animal life. Dr Mitchill, an American chemist, had put
forward a * Theory of Contagion ' which ascribed to this
gas the power of spreading disease. Davy, in his attic bed
room, soon disposed of this theory. Here is his own account :

The fallacy of this theory was soon demonstrated by a few
coarse experiments made on small quantities of the gas, procured
from zinc and diluted nitrous acid. Wounds were exposed to
its action ; the bodies of animals were immersed in it without
injury, and I breathed it, mingled in small quantities in common
air, without remarkable effects. An inability to procure it in
sufficient quantities prevented me at the time from pursuing the
experiments to any greater extent. I communicated an account
of them to Dr Beddoes.

Dr Beddoes must have made up his mind, immediately
he received this account, that the right place for Humphry
Davy to continue his chemical studies was in the Pneumatic
Institution, which he was just then establishing at Clifton,
a suburb of Bristol, for the purpose of testing the medicinal
effects of different gases. He accordingly offered this boy

IO GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

of nineteen the position of superintendent thereof. With
the help of Mr Giddy suitable terms were arranged, Mr
Borlase released Humphry from his unexpired apprentice
ship, and in October 1798 he left Penzance for Bristol. His
brother states in his biography : c If this situation had been
created purposely for him, it could not have been more
suitable to the bent of his genius, or better adapted for calling
into activity and developing fully the powers of his mind. 5
Only one person seems to have been opposed to the whole
business, poor old Dr Tonkin, who was so disgusted by
Humphry's disruption of his own plans for his future that
he struck the rascal's name out of his will.

Behold, then, the juvenile Davy transported to the
Pneumatic Institution at Clifton. He was destined to
remain there little more than two years, but how busy he
was going to be during that brief period !

First of all, while the erection of his laboratory was being
completed, he put into order for publication his researches
on heat and light. These occupied the first 200 pages of
a volume, Contributions to Physical and Medical Knowledge,
collected by Thomas Beddoes, M.D., printed at Bristol in
January 1799. Beddoes, of course, lauded Davy's ideas to
the skies ; more important, the venerable Priestley, still
struggling to revive the phlogiston theory, wrote from his
American exile to congratulate the young author on his
philosophical acumen ' x ; but the critics rushed at him
like a pack of wolves. It may be an exaggeration to state,
as Dr Paris did, that the theories put forward in these essays
have scarcely a parallel in extravagance and absurdity, but
in sober truth the c infant speculations ' which they contain
are ninety per cent nonsense, and, it is difficult to understand

1 Later, in 1801, Priestley wrote to Davy : ' It gives me peculiar satis
faction that, as I am far advanced in life, and cannot expect to do much more,
I shall have so able a fellow-labourer in my own country. I rejoice that you
are so young a man, and perceiving the ardour with which you begin your
career, I have no doubt of your success.'

HUMPHRY DAVY II

how many of the experimental results cited in their support
could actually have been obtained. Davy, of course, was
deeply chagrined ; he subsequently declared that he would
joyfiilly relinquish any little glory or reputation he might
have acquired by later researches, were it possible to blot
out these essays from the records of science.

No doubt, however, the bitter experience was a valuable
lesson to him ; it warned him of the dangers of hasty hypoth
eses and unconfirmed conclusions. In August of the same
year he made the following remarks in his note-book :

I was perhaps wrong in publishing, with such haste, a new
theory of chemistry. My mind was ardent and enthusiastic.
Since that time, my knowledge of facts is increased ; since that
time I have become more sceptical. It is more laborious to
accumulate facts than to reason concerning them ; but one
good experiment is of more value than the ingenuity of a brain
like Newton's.

The last sentence is manifestly an over-statement, but by
that time the * good experiment ' had already arrived.

Meanwhile Davy was enjoying to the full the literary
contacts afforded him in Bristol. The city was at that time
particularly favoured by young men of genius, and Dr
Beddoes's house was their gathering-point. Here Davy
met, among others, Southey, Wordsworth and Coleridge.
All these c had very little the advantage of him in age ;
they also were entering with eager emulation on the course
of glory ; he formed their acquaintance and obtained their
friendship ; and though the great objects of his pursuit
were of a scientific nature, yet he found time to take a part
with them in labours purely literary.'

So speaks his biographer brother. Here it will be
sufficient to give a bare list of the main works upon which
his note-books of 1799 show that he was then assiduously
occupied. In the first place, no fewer than five novels, in
all of which he himself is obviously the hero : The Child
of * Education, or the Narrative of W. Morley ; The Lover of Nature,

12 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

or the Feelings of Eldon ; The Dreams of a Solitary ; Imla, the
Man of Simplicity ; and The Villager : a Tale for the Common
People, to prove that great Cities are the Abodes of Vice. Secondly,
a number of essays, among which, c On Luxury/ * On
Genius/ c On Dreaming/ and c On Education ' merit special
mention, the last being a preliminary draft of a more extended
treatise to be entitled, Observations on Education and the Formation
of the Human Intellect, designed for the Use of Parents and In
structors ! And finally, an epic poem in the style of Milton,
six books in blank verse, large fragments of which have
survived, on Moses ; or the Deliverance of the Israelites from
Egypt, together with a mass of minor poetry.

All these, however, were subsidiary recreations ; his
official task was to investigate the physiological effects of the
respiration of different gases for the Pneumatic Institution,
and right manfully did he set about it. His first experiments,
naturally, were upon the use of nitrous oxide, the gas with
which he had already made some preliminary trials in
Penzance. The results that he obtained, * of a very novel
and wonderful kind, contrary to all expectation, and almost
exceeding belief/ were published in 1800 in an octavo
volume. Had he never written any other work, this alone
would have immortalised his name.

* In April (1799),' he states, * I obtained nitrous oxide
in a state of purity, and ascertained many of its chemical
properties. Reflections upon these properties, and upon my
former trials, made me resolve to endeavour to inspire it in
its pure form ; for I saw no other way in which its respira-
bility or powers could be determined.'

This resolution, although he was well aware of the danger
of the experiment, he rapidly carried into effect. Here is
his own description of one of many trials :

A thrilling, extending from the chest to the extremities, was
almost immediately produced. I felt a sense of tangible extension
highly pleasurable in every limb ; my visible impressions were
dazzling, and apparently magnified, I heard distinctly every sound
in the room, and was perfectly aware of my situation. By degrees,

HUMPHRY DAVY 13

as the pleasurable sensations Increased, I lost all connection with
external things ; trains of vivid visible images rapidly passed
through my mind, and were connected with words in such a
manner, as to produce perceptions perfectly novel. I existed
in a world of newly connected and newly modified ideas : I
theorised, I imagined that I made discoveries. When I was
awakened from this semi-delirious trance by Dr Kinglake, who
took the bag from my mouth, indignation and pride were the
first feelings produced by the sight of the persons about me.
My emotions were enthusiastic and sublime, and for a minute
I walked round the room perfectly regardless of what was said
to me. As I recovered my former state of mind I felt an inclina
tion to communicate the discoveries I had made during the
experiment. I endeavoured to recall the ideas : they were
feeble and indistinct ; one collection of terms however presented
itself ; and with a most intense belief and prophetic manner,
I exclaimed to Dr Kinglake, e Nothing exists but thoughts ! The
universe is composed of impressions 3 ideas, pleasures and pains ! '

Once it was ascertained that the gas could be inhaled
with safety, all of Davy's friends were eager to assist him
by putting their experiences on record. Even the sedate
Southey, the future Poet Laureate, is reported to have
smiled while c under the influence/ The story given by
Coleridge is of particular interest :

The first time I inspired the nitrous oxide, I felt a highly
pleasurable sensation of warmth over my whole frame, resembling
that which I remember once to have experienced after returning
from a walk in the snow into a warm room. The only motion
which I felt inclined to make, was that of laughing at those who
were looking at me.

The second time I felt the same pleasurable sensation of
warmth, but not, I think, in quite so great a degree. I wished
to know what effect it would have on my impressions ; I fixed
my eye on some trees in the distance, but I did not find any
other effect except that they became dimmer and dimmer, and
looked at last as if I had seen them through tears.

Comparing these two accounts carefully, can we really
believe that Coleridge attended as many of Davy's lectures

14 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

as he could in later years merely ' to increase his stock of
metaphors ' ? The personal attraction must surely have
exceeded the literary. Davy * himself was anxious at this
time to ascertain whether the state of intoxication produced
by inhaling nitrous oxide would improve his poetry. He
took walks on the more sublime parts of Clifton Down,
composing verses while breathing the gas from a bag. The
effect was insignificant, as the following effusion demon
strates :

Not in the ideal dreams of wild desire

Have I beheld a rapture-wakening form :
My bosom burns with no unhallow'd fire,

Yet is my cheek with rosy blushes warm ;
Yet are my eyes with sparkling lustre fill'd ;

Yet is my mouth replete with murmuring sound ;
Yet are my limbs with inward transports fill'd

And clad with new-born mightiness around.

Yet is it not possible that to this idea of Davy we owe
c Kubla Khan/ composed by Coleridge while he was
making a similar test of the influence of opium ?

The remarkable influence of nitrous oxide on human
emotions and behaviour soon became noised abroad beyond
Bristol, and it was not long before the fame of Davy spread
not only over Great Britain, but also to the United States,
through demonstrations with the e pleasure-producing air/
at which the most ludicrous results were frequently obtained. 1
It is astounding, nevertheless, that the application of Davy's
discovery by the medical profession to the relief of human
suffering by its use in operations was delayed until long after
Davy's death. Only in 1844 did an American dentist named
Horace Wells first demonstrate its value in this connection,
through the painless extraction of one of his own upper
teeth. A subsequent experiment at the Boston Medical
School failed, however/because an insufficient quantity of the
gas was used, and sulphuric ether and chloroform became

1 The stories of much earlier nitrous oxide ' orgies ' conducted bv Daw
and Borlase at Penzance are purely fictitious.

HUMPHRY DAVY 15

the earliest popular anaesthetics. Not until much later did
c laughing gas ' come into favour for employment in tooth
extractions, and it is still one of the most widely used anaes
thetics in this and certain other minor operations.

Yet the possibilities of the use of nitrous oxide in dentistry
and surgery were clearly appreciated by Davy himself as
early as 1799. Looking back on the activities of this boy of
twenty they have not yet all been enumerated it is
evident that he must have been leading not one double life,
but several double lives, during his residence at Clifton, and
retribution inevitably followed. While completing his
observations on nitrous oxide, this venerable philosopher
cut a wisdom tooth ! Perhaps he should be permitted to
describe the experience in his own words :

The power of the immediate operation of the gas in removing
intense physical pain, I had a very good opportunity of ascer
taining.

In cutting one of the unlucky teeth called denies sapientiae,
I experienced an extensive inflammation of the gum, accom
panied with great pain, which equally destroyed the power of
repose, and of consistent action.

On the day when the inflammation was most troublesome,
I breathed three large doses of nitrous oxide. The pain always
diminished after the first four or five inspirations ; the thrilling
came on as usual, and uneasiness was for a few minutes swallowed
up in pleasure. As the former state of mind however returned,
the state of organ returned with it ; and I once imagined that the
pain was more severe after the experiment than before.

A little later in his publication of 1800 he makes the
definite remark :

As nitrous oxide in its extensive operation appears capable
of destroying physical pain, it may probably be used with advan
tage during surgical operations in which no great effusion of
blood takes place.

What a pity it is that Davy never realised the ambition
that he cherished at this time, an ambition that he did not

1 6 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

definitely abandon for many years, of completing his medical
studies and becoming a practising physician ! What agony
might not mankind have been spared through his efforts !
Why did he not press his work in this direction any further ?

The reason is simple Dr Beddoes. That gentleman's
lack of scientific balance had already induced Davy to rush
his researches on light and heat into premature print, now
he was again demonstrating himself to be ' as little fitted
for a Mentor as a weather-cock for a compass. 3 He envisaged
the Pneumatic Institution acquiring an international reputa
tion through Davy's discoveries ; nitrous oxide must prove
to be a specific for all kinds of diseases. That the wish,
with him, was indeed the father to the thought was shown
by Davy and Coleridge when they assisted him to cure an
ignorant patient of paralysis, concealing from him the fact
that the man had never been given nitrous oxide at all !
e It were criminal to retard the general promulgation of so
important a discovery/ exulted Beddoes. Davy, however,
not desirous of any more discredit, and foreseeing the future
collapse of the Pneumatic Institution under such a director,
confessed his deception and turned his own investigations
into safer fields.

About this time, in fact, he was forced to go home for
a month's holiday, so seriously had he injured his health
through experiments on a number of other gases, the effects
of which he wished to compare with those of nitrous oxide.
An attempt to breathe nitric oxide proved painful enough,
but his most appalling experience resulted from inhalation
of * hydrocarbonate ' or c water gas 'a fifty-fifty mixture
of carbon monoxide and hydrogen. That lie did not kill
himself with this was a sheer miracle. After taking three
deep breaths, he just managed to drop the mouthpiece from
his lips before sinking into annihilation. On recovering
consciousness, he articulated faintly : ' I don't think I shall
die,' and proceeded to note with meticulous accuracy all
the symptoms accompanying his agonising progress back to
life, even remembering to ask for a dose of nitrous oxide in

HUMPHRY DAVY 17

order to test its effect under such circumstances. Nothing
daunted by this escape, he tried only a week later to respire
pure carbon dioxide, but his epiglottis rebelled. Not without
justice has this series of experiments been entitled c one of
the boldest ever undertaken by man. 5 A safer field of
investigation was indeed necessary for the survival of the
young investigator.

The study of e galvanic phenomena ' had already begun
to attract him. Scarcely had Nicholson and Carlisle
announced their accidental discovery, on 30 April 1800,
that water could be decomposed by the voltaic pile (or by
an electric current, as we should say nowadays) into its
constituent gases, hydrogen and oxygen, before Davy was
hard on their heels, and by January of the following year
he had published no less than six papers on the chemical
changes accompanying electrolysis. Discussion of this work
will be deferred for the moment, however, for February saw
Davy released from Dr Beddoes and installed in another
position Director of the Laboratory and Assistant Lecturer
in Chemistry at the Royal Institution in London.

Bidding farewell to his friends in Bristol before proceed
ing to the ' Abode of Vice/ Davy nourished no qualms
regarding his prospects in his new responsibilities, A few
months earlier Coleridge had visited the metropolis and
had been asked on his return : e You must have met some
clever men in London ; how do they compare with Davy ? '
' Clever men ? ' Coleridge replied ; c our Humphry could eat
them all ! * He not only could ; he did.

The Royal Institution had been founded in 1799 by
Count Rumford, himself a scientist of the first distinction,
6 with the intent of diffusing a knowledge of science and of
its applications to the common purposes of life, and of
exciting a taste for science amongst the higher ranks.' The
first professor of chemistry, however, Dr Garnett of Glasgow,
had not proved a success ; he sank into melancholia after
the death of his wife and attendance at his lectures languished.

1 8 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

Seeking to revive the drooping fortunes of the Institution,
Rumford had his attention drawn to Davy, whose engage
ment was made on the understanding that he should step
into Garnett's shoes on his retiral, which actually came into
effect within a year.

In spite of the high recommendations that Davy received,
Count Rumford was evidently uncertain for a time as to the
ability of this uncouth country lad to measure up to the
duties of his position. It is to be suspected, in fact, that
Davy and his c laughing gas 3 were designed, originally, mainly
to act as comic relief to the lugubrious Garnett. Look at
the plate, facing page 20, which portrays a e Seance ' held
at the Royal Institution in 1801 ! Rumford himself is stand
ing on the right, Garnett is administering the nitrous oxide,
and Davy is assisting with the bellows. 1 That Rumford had
some regrets in regard to his precipitancy in engaging Davy
is revealed by the fact that he would not at first allow him
to lecture in the main theatre of the Royal Institution. After
he had heard him speak once in the smaller lecture room,
however, all his doubts were removed and he exclaimed :
c Let him command any arrangements which the Institution
can afford/ Thenceforth Davy was not to function as comic
relief, he was promoted to the role of juvenile lead.

His popularity was immediate and prodigious, and the
Royal Institution boomed. Regarding his very first lecture,
on Galvanic Phenomena, delivered in April 1801, the
Philosophical Magazine reported as follows :

The audience were highly gratified, and testified their satis
faction by general applause. Mr Davy, who appears to be very
young, acquitted himself admirably well ; from the sparkling
intelligence of his eye, his animated manner, and the tout ensemble,
we have no doubt of his attaining a distinguished eminence.

One of his earliest friends, Mr Parkes, wrote after his
death :

1 Part of the cartoon on the left has been suppressed, it may be noted, as
too crude for modern standards.

HUMPHRY DAVY ig

The sensation created by his first course of Lectures at the
Institution, and the enthusiastic admiration which they obtained,
is at this period scarcely to be imagined. Men of the first rank
and talent, the literary and the scientific, the practical and the
theoretical, blue-stockings and women of fashion, the old and
the young, all crowded eagerly crowded the lecture-room. His
youth, his simplicity, his natural eloquence, his chemical know
ledge, his happy illustrations and well-conducted experiments,
excited universal attention and unbounded applause. . . .
Compliments, invitations and presents were showered upon him
in abundance from all quarters ; his society was courted by
all, and all appeared proud of his acquaintance.

And Dr Paris, not always a sympathetic biographer,
states :

At length, so popular did he become, under the auspices
of the Duchess of Gordon and other leaders of high fashion,
that even their soirees were considered incomplete without his
presence ; and yet these fascinations, strong as they must have
been, never tempted him from his allegiance to Science : never
did the charms of the saloon allure him from the duties of the
laboratory, or distract him from the duties of the lecture-room.
The crowds that repaired to the Institution in the morning were,
day after day, gratified by newly devised and highly illustrative
experiments, conducted with the utmost address, and explained
in language at once perspicuous and eloquent.

He brought down Science from those heights which were
before accessible only to a few, and placed her within the reach
of all ; he divested the goddess of all severity of aspect, and
represented her as attired by the Graces.

Envious voices, of course, were not entirely silent, and
even some of his old friends felt alarm for his future.
Coleridge, for instance, wrote :

I see two Serpents at the cradle of his genius : Dissipation
with a perpetual increase of acquaintances, and the constant
presence of Inferiors and Devotees, with that too great facility
of attaining admiration, which degrades Ambition into Vanity,

Such solicitude was unnecessary ; Davy could keep his
head for the present. His exterior, indeed, might adjust

2O GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

itself to his new environment contrast the unkempt yokel
on page 20, the tidier, but still unsophisticated, youth on
page 5, and the Beau Brummel on page 36 ! but chemical
research remained his ruling passion despite all other
distractions. For some years, it is true, the variety of his
duties at the Royal Institution he was called upon to deliver
successive series of lectures on tanning, on mineralogy and
metallurgy, and on agriculture prevented him from con
tinuing his electrochemical investigations as actively as he
desired, but he was elected to the Royal Society in 1803
and when, in 1806, he was invited by that society to deliver
its Bakerian Lecture, he established indubitably his place
as * the first chemist of his time.'

Dr Thomas Thomson considered this paper to be the
finest and completest specimen of inductive reasoning to
appear during the age in which he lived ; Berzelius, the
6 Dictator ' of European chemistry, spoke of it as one of the
most remarkable memoirs that had ever enriched the theory
of the science. Still more significant, although Great Britain
and France were then at war, a committee of the French
Institute awarded Davy the prize of 3,000 francs which had
been established by Napoleon himself ' for the best experi
ment on the galvanic fluid. 3 Some people said that
Davy ought not to accept this prize, but he remarked :
e If the two countries or governments are at war, the
men of science are not. That would, indeed, be a civil
war of the worst description.' It is sad to reflect that
such sentiments are much less tenable today than in
1806.

Many of the ideas expressed in Davy's first Bakerian
Lecture, however, almost appear to belong to the twentieth
rather than to the nineteenth century. It is impossible to
describe them adequately in brief space ; let it suffice to
indicate that the whole lecture constitutes a remarkable
anticipation of modern electrochemical developments.

An important section of the paper examines in detail the
fact that, when an electric current is passed through the

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P

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^H ^ g

O d^

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.2

HUMPHRY DAVY

21

solution of a salt in water, acid collects around the positive
and alkali around the negative pole. The formation of the
two products of electrolysis at a distance from each other
had always intrigued Davy ; back in Bristol he had shown
that hydrogen and oxygen bubbled off at the two electrodes
in the proportions required to give water even when the
human body intervened to form part of the circuit (Fig. i).
Now he found that acid and alkali were similarly produced
quite separately, and forecast the utilisation of electrolysis
for the large-scale manufacture of acids and alkalis. Today
hundreds of thousands of tons of caustic soda, for example.

FIG. i The human body * experiment

are obtained annually from common salt for use in the soap
industry by this very method.

Still more astonishing was Davy's suggestion that elec
trolysis should lead to the discovery of the true elements of
compound bodies, yet before a year had elapsed he himself
had fulfilled his own prophecy. If his first Bakerian Lecture
was a masterpiece, his second, delivered in November 1807,
was a veritable triumph. Two new elements potassium
and sodium were exhibited to an awestruck audience ;
metals such as mankind had never seen before, metals which
swam on water, decomposing that liquid with a beautiful
glow.

When Davy, passing an electric current through fused
caustic potash in the laboratory of the Royal Institution
on 6 October 1807, saw the first tiny globules of molten

(969) 3

22 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

potassium, bright as quicksilver, break through the surface
and take fire, he was as excited as a child. According to
his cousin, Edmund Davy, who was acting as his assistant
at the time, he actually danced about the room in ecstasy,
and it was some time before he became sufficiently composed
to continue his work. c Capital experiment ! ' he wrote in
his note-book, and a capital experiment indeed it was. A
few days later he obtained sodium in a similar manner from
caustic soda, and before the middle of November he had
determined the main physical and chemical properties of
both metals.

The whole work was carried out under conditions of
wild mental agitation ; few discoveries of such magnitude
have been made and perfected so rapidly. He composed
his lecture in a state of fever ; after its delivery he collapsed
and lay for weeks at the point of death. The doors of the
Royal Institution were besieged by anxious inquirers, but
his understudies could not tempt them inside as far as the
lecture-room. Bulletins were issued daily, and a public
subscription was raised to provide him with bigger and
better batteries with which to carry his investigations further
on his recovery. He might have been a prince of the blood,
so great was the general concern.

During Davy's illness Berzelius and other chemists on
the Continent had anticipated him, to some extent, by
preparing metallic calcium and barium from lime and
baryta by modifications of his methods. He immediately
countered by the isolation of three more elements strontium,
magnesium and boron. What a man !

His next work of note was to prove the elementary nature
of chlorine. This gas had been discovered by Scheele in
1774, in the days of the old phlogiston theory, and christened
e dephlogisticated marine air.' Lavoisier considered it to be
a compound of oxygen and muriatic acid (what we now call
hydrochloric acid), and termed it ' oxymuriatic acid '
accordingly. Davy, by a series of the most brilliant experi
ments, showed that oxygen was entirely absent from chlorine.

HUMPHRY DAVY 23

The film of moisture obtained when a mixture of hydrogen
and chlorine combines was demonstrated to be due merely
to insufficient drying of the gases beforehand. Tremendous
controversy ensued before Davy's conclusions were universally
accepted, but even Berzelius, the protagonist of the doctrine
of Lavoisier, finally gave way and enjoined his cook-assistant
in his kitchen laboratory in Stockholm to speak no longer
of oxymuriatic acid : c Thou must call it chlorine, Anna ;
that is better. 5

Incidentally Davy was the first to discover, in the course
of his experiments on chlorine, that the dry gas is incapable
of bleaching vegetable colours, the presence of a trace of
water being necessary in all industrial bleaching operations
in which chlorine is employed. He also isolated many new
compounds of chlorine, too numerous to mention in detail
here.

Davy was now in the prime of life, at the height of fame
and happiness. His popularity had spread from London to
the whole United Kingdom ; when he was invited to speak
in Dublin in 1810 and 1811 the laboratory of the Dublin
Society, which had been enlarged to hold 550 people, would
not accommodate half the persons who desired to attend his
lectures, and from ten to twenty guineas were offered for
a ticket. He was evidently feeling the strain of continuous
work, however, and was glad to break away to Gonnemara
to fish : he was always ' a little mad 5 about fishing. At
this period he was being pestered, also, by some of his
influential friends to enter the Church, while he himself had
serious thoughts of resuming his medical studies, with the
view of practising as a physician. He actually entered his
name at Cambridge and kept some terms there for that
purpose.

At this point of his career, moreover, he showed that he
was not free from human frailty, after all, by falling in
love, and in April 1812 he was married to Mrs Apreece,
a rich widow from Antigua and a c far-away cousin ' of

24 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

Sir Walter Scott. It was not her wealth that attracted him
Davy had not the slightest interest in money matters, and
never sought to commercialise his many inventions it was
a true love-match, on Davy's side at least. One of his friends
celebrated the occasion with the following verse :

Too many men have often seen

Their talents underrated ;
But Davy owns that his have been

Duly Apreeciated.

The wedding, however, was not a success. Sir Humphry
married he had been knighted a few days before his
wedding was not such an attraction to fashionable ladies
as plain Humphry single ; Lady Davy also was no longer
the lioness that she had proved to be while unattached. The
social ambitions of the young couple were doomed to failure,
and mutual disillusionment soon followed.

On his marriage Sir Humphry resigned his official duties
at the Royal Institution, but retained the title of Honorary
Professor in order to be free to devote more time to original
research. While delivering his last series of lectures there,
during the winter of 1812, he made what ultimately proved
to be the greatest of all his discoveries the discovery of
Michael Faraday. The story of this discovery will be given
in full in the following chapter.

In October 1813, Great Britain and France being still
at war, Sir Humphry obtained special permission from
Napoleon to make an extended scientific tour of the Con
tinent, and proceeded to Paris with Faraday, whom he had
engaged as an assistant, and a small ( travelling laboratory.'
He was received with the greatest cordiality by all the
prominent French chemists of that period, and within a few
weeks he solved for them the mystery of a c violet vapour,'
produced by the action of sulphuric acid on the ash of sea
weed, that had been occupying their attention for the last
two years. Davy showed that this substance, which con
denses on cooling to lustrous black crystals, was an element

HUMPHRY DAVY 25

with similar chemical properties to chlorine, and called it
6 iodine.' His French colleagues were overwhelmed by
his ingenuity, but did not altogether relish his rapidity
of thought. His insular arrogance is reported to have
caused frequent offence, and it could not have been
pleasant for them to learn that Napoleon had heard
that the young English chemist had a poor opinion of
them all.

Davy, it is to be feared, soon outwore his welcome in
Paris, and Lady Davy, who accompanied the party, proved
to be a constant source of trouble, as will appear in the next
chapter. On one occasion she ventured to take a walk in
the Tuileries wearing a cockle-shell hat, such as was fashion
able just then in London. Parisian style, however, de
manded at that time a bonnet of most voluminous dimen
sions, and such a crowd assembled around the e unknown
exotic ' that she finally had to quit the gardens surrounded
by a military guard with fixed bayonets !

Altogether the trip was far from an ideal honeymoon,
and Davy's later tours on the Continent were mostly made
alone. After eighteen months had been spent wandering
all over France, Italy, Switzerland and Germany, meeting
the most famous scientists of all these countries, the party
was glad to return to England in April 1815. Davy had
written a great deal of poetry during his travels, but it is
noteworthy that none of it treats of love.

Now came Davy's last great achievement in chemistry,
by virtue of which his name is still most widely revered, the
invention of the miner's safety-lamp. A recent succession
of disastrous explosions in the coal mines had led to the
formation of a society to investigate the whole situation and
to seek for remedies. When this society sought Davy's
assistance, he replied in August 1815 as follows :

It will give me great satisfaction if my chemical knowledge
can be of any use in an enquiry so interesting to humanity, and

26 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

I beg you will assure the committee of my readiness to co-operate
with them in any experiments or investigations on the subject.

If you think my visiting the mines can be of any use, I will
cheerfully do so.

After examining the danger from fire-damp in a number
of collieries, he was able to report two months later :

My experiments are going on successfully and I hope in a
few days to send you an account of them ; I am going to be
fortunate far beyond my expectations.

By November he was ready to announce the fundamental
principle of the safety-lamp to the Royal Society, and in
January 1816 models of his design were tested in two of the
most dangerous mines near Newcastle with perfect success.
Here is a record by Mr Buddie, manager of the Wallsend
Colliery :

I first tried it in an explosive mixture on the surface ; and
then took it into a mine ; it is impossible for me to express my
feelings at the time when I first suspended the lamp in the mine
and saw it red hot. I said to those around me, ' We have at
last subdued this monster. 3

An early form of the Davy safety-lamp, together with
a more modern variety, is shown in the diagram on page 27.
Starting with the discovery that gaseous explosions would
not pass through narrow tubes, particularly if these were
made of metal, Davy reasoned that this stoppage must
depend upon the cooling effect of the surface of the tubes.
c Metal is a better conductor of heat than glass ; and it
has been already shown that fire-damp requires a very
strong heat for its inflammation. 3

This cooling effect was next found to be equally efficient
in preventing the passage of an explosion when the narrow
tubes were replaced by a mesh of wire gauze. The gauze
presents, essentially,, a multitude of very short fine tubes
through which the gas must pass, and it cools an inflam
mable mixture down so quickly that, normally, no flame

HUMPHRY DAVY 27

can travel through it. A miner carrying a lighted Davy
lamp knows immediately when he has entered a dangerous
area underground, since the inflammable mixture outside
readily passes through the meshes of the gauze and burns
within it, filling the cylinder with a bright flame. No
explosion will pass outwards, however, even although the
gauze becomes heated to redness.

Davy's invention, intended primarily solely to save

Ajr leaves.
"Bonnet?

Wire Gauze.

Air enters.

G/ass
Cy/mder.

A B

FIG. 2 Safety-lamps, old and new

human lives, meant millions of pounds annually to the
mining industry during the last century, since it enabled
larger and deeper (also more dangerous) pits to be worked.
Our modern Aladdin, however, disdained to become rich
himself by taking out a patent for his invention, he gave it
freely to the benefit of the world in general. In September
1817, it is true, he was presented with a magnificent service
of plate, valued at 2,500, by a grateful committee of colliery
proprietors, but even this, as directed in his will, passed
eventually, after the death of Lady Davy and his brother,
to the Royal Society c to found a medal to be given annually

28 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

for the most important discovery in chemistry made any
where in Europe or Anglo-America. 3 An unfortunate con
troversy took place about this time owing to claims made
by the friends of George Stephenson, then an obscure wheel
wright, later the famous railway engineer, for his priority in
the invention of the safety-lamp, but there is no doubt that,
while Stephenson was independently groping towards the
method of protecting the flame, Davy had already leaped
at the right answer. His promotion to the rank of baronet
in October 1818 was felt by the whole nation to be richly
deserved.

The remainder of Davy's life calls for only brief comment.
Honours were still heaped upon him he became President
of the Royal Society, for example, in 1820 but he did little
more scientific work of lasting value. He spent a great deal
of energy in investigating for the Admiralty a method for
preserving the copper sheathing of ships from corrosion, but
his suggested solution, the insertion of protecting bars of a
more electropositive metal, such as iron or zinc, while per
fectly sound in theory, failed completely in practice, since
the uncorroded copper quickly became so foul by adhesion
of barnacles and seaweed as to impede the progress of the
vessel. The various official trials that were made took him
on wide journeys over the North Sea, and afforded him some
good fishing in Scandinavia, but the final abandonment of
the project mortified him bitterly, as may be seen from the
following letter to his old friend, Mr Children :

A mind of much sensibility might be disgusted, and one
might be induced to say why should I labour for public objects,
merely to meet abuse ? I am irritated by them more than I
ought to be ; but I am getting wiser every day recollecting
Galileo, and the times when philosophers and public benefactors
were burnt for their services.

As time went on, and as his health deteriorated, he
became fonder than ever of social relaxations, foreign travel
and above all his old recreations of writing and angling.

HUMPHRY DAVY 2Q

Sir Walter Scott, who had first met him in 1805 in the
Lake District when, in company with Wordsworth, they
' climbed the great brow of the mighty Helvellyn/ frequently
entertained him at Abbotsford, and here is Lockhart's account
of one particular house-party there :

But the most picturesque figure was the illustrious inventor
of the safety-lamp. He had come for his favourite sport of
angling . . . and his fisherman's costume a brown hat with
flexible brims, surrounded with line upon line, and innumerable
fly-hooks ; jackboots worthy of a Dutch smuggler, and a fustian
surtout dabbled with the blood of salmon made a fine contrast
to the smart jackets, white-cord breeches, and well-polished
jockey-boots of the less distinguished cavaliers about him. I
have seen Sir Humphry in many places, and in company of many
different descriptions ; but never to such advantage as at Abbots-
ford. His host and he delighted in each other, and the modesty
of their mutual admiration was a memorable spectacle. Davy
was by nature a poet and Scott, though anything but a philos
opher in the modern sense of that term, might, I think it very
likely, have pursued the study of physical science with zeal and
success, had he happened to fall in with such an instructor as
Sir Humphry would have been to him, in his early life. Each
strove to make the other talk and they did so in turn more
charmingly than I have ever heard either on any other occasion
whatsoever. Scott in his romantic narratives touched a deeper
chord of feeling than usual, when he had such a listener as Davy ;
and Davy, when induced to open his views upon any questions
of scientific interest in Scott's presence, did so with a degree of
clear energetic eloquence, and with a flow of imagery and
illustration, of which neither his habitual tone of table-talk (least
of all in London), nor any of his prose writings (except, indeed,
the posthumous Consolations of Travel) could suggest an adequate
notion. I remember William Laidlaw whispering to me, one
night, when their e wrapt talk ' had kept the circle round the
fire until long after the usual bed-time of Abbotsford * Gud
preserve us 1 This is a very superior occasion ! Eh, sirs ! ' he
added, cocking his eye like a bird, c I wonder if Shakespeare and
Bacon ever met to screw ilk other up ? '

The last two books that he wrote were Salmonia, or Days
of Fly-fishing, and Consolations in Travel, or the Last Days of a

30 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

Philosopher. He died in Geneva on 29 May 1829, before he
had completed his fifty-first year.

Davy has never lacked detractors, either during his
lifetime or since his death. Every truly great man
must submit himself to the sneers of envious inferiors, and
Davy never made the slightest attempt to evade criticism.
He was always vain of his accomplishments, but had
he not the best reason to be ? Only in more mature
years did that vanity gradually harden to arrogance,
as in his treatment of the French chemists and, as will
be seen in the next chapter, in his later dealings with
Faraday.

It may be admitted that it was hardly tactful for c the
first chemist of his age * always to act openly on that assump
tion, but his nature was such that he could not behave
otherwise. Similarly, on a fishing expedition, he must always
be the best angler of the party, and at a fashionable gathering
he must always be the centre of attraction. It is to be
doubted, however, whether many of those who have accused
Davy so vehemently of snobbery would have acted much
differently if they had been placed in his position, and
certainly very few, if any, would have carried it off with
his success.

The most eminent among his contemporaries never
joined in the chorus of censure and abuse. That dour old
Quaker, John Dalton, for instance, who toiled until the
twilight of his life teaching little children the rudiments of
arithmetic, and whose genius was not recognised by the
Royal Society until he was fifty-six, what does he, who might
justly have grudged his junior colleague his easy ascent to
the top of the ladder of fame, say about Davy, who never
believed in c ultimate particles or atoms 5 ? This is what
he wrote after visiting him in London :

He is a very agreeable and intelligent young man, and we
have interesting conversations in an evening. The principal
failing in his character is that he does not smoke.

HUMPHRY DAVY 3!

If any man had reason to resent Davy's behaviour towards
him, that man was Michael Faraday. Yet the great French
chemist, J. B. Dumas, records Faraday's attitude in the
following anecdote :

Faraday never forgot what he owed to Davy. Visiting him
at the family lunch, twenty years after the death of the latter,
he noticed evidently that I responded with some coolness to the
praises which the recollection of Davy's great discoveries had
evoked from him. He made no comment But, after the meal,
he simply took me down to the library of the Royal Institution,
and stopping before the portrait of Davy, he said, e He was a
great man, wasn't he? ' Then, turning round, he added, c It was
here that he spoke to me for the first time.' I bowed. We went
to the laboratory. Faraday took out a note-book, opened it and
pointed out with his finger the words written by Davy, at the
very moment when by means of the battery he had just decom
posed potash, and had seen the first globule of potassium ever
isolated by the hand of man. Davy had traced with a feverish
hand a circle which separates them from the rest of the page :
the words, c Capital Experiment,' which he wrote below, cannot
be read without emotion by any true chemist. I confessed
myself conquered, and this time, without hesitating longer, I
joined in the admiration of my good friend.

Another friend of Faraday, Lady Pollock, has reported
in similar terms :

On one occasion, when some allusion to his early life
from a friend brought on the mention of a painful passage
between himself and Sir Humphry Davy, he rose abruptly from
his seat and said, ' Talk of something else, and never let me
speak of this again, I wish to remember nothing but Davy's
kindness.'

What wonderful tributes these are to the greatness of
Davy, but how much more wonderful testimony to the
nobility of Faraday ! Truly, as Thorpe has said, it is not
necessary to belittle one in order to eulogise the other. With
typical French conciseness, Dumas has summed up the
difference between the two men in a single phrase, written

32 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

in relation to their visit to Paris in 1813 : c We admired
Davy, we loved Faraday.'

The foregoing pages, it is hoped, have demonstrated that
Davy was indeed admirable. The ensuing chapter will
attempt to show that Faraday was not only admirable but
also lovable.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Memoirs of the Life of Sir Humphry Davy. John Davy, 1836
The Life of Sir Humphry Davy. John Ayrton Paris, 1831
Collected Works. Edited by John Davy, 1839-40
Humphry Davy ; Poet and Philosopher. T. E. Thorpe, 1896
The Scientific Achievements of Sir Humphry Davy. Joshua G. Gregory,

British Scientists of the Nineteenth Century. J. G. Growther, 1935

CHAPTER II
MICHAEL FARADAY

THE great German scientist, Wilhelm Ostwald, whose
laboratory at Leipzig was the Mecca of all good physical
chemists in the last years of the nineteenth century, relates
that one of his research students, a Japanese, once put to
him a very queer question : e How can men of future genius
be recognised in earliest youth ? ' When asked why this
should be done, the Oriental went on to explain that then
it would be possible for the government to make the develop
ment of children of genius, particularly in the case of the
poorer classes, its special charge, being recompensed sub
sequently a thousandfold by their services to the State.

Ostwald became intrigued in the subject, and investigated
his departmental records to see if he could discover an
answer. He soon found that it was not those students who
were particularly distinguished in their class work that later
became famous ; the men of future worth were those who
had not been satisfied with what they were given in their
regular scheme of instruction. Originality was the first,
and the supreme, indication of genius. Any teacher of
experience, on reflection, will confirm this finding, and
frequent examples of its validity will appear in the course of
this volume.

Looking into the early lives of great scientists, however,
with genuine Teutonic thoroughness, Ostwald discovered
another very interesting fact, that men of genius from their
earliest years fall into two types the romantic and the
classical. These types exhibit entirely distinct characteristics
throughout their careers, and Ostwald finally wrote a thick
book Great Men in which this whole topic is examined in
minute detail.

His perfect example of the romantic type is Humphry

33

34 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

Davy. Davy's genius appears to have been essentially
intuitive, he worked rapidly and easily, great discoveries
dropped into his hands almost of their own accord, true
gifts from the gods. But his genius was also erratic, he was
a will-o'-the-wisp, here one minute and gone another ;
nobody could tell what he was going to do next.

Michael Faraday, on the other hand, is an ideal instance
of the classical type. His was the kind of genius that Carlyle
defined as a c transcendent capacity for taking trouble. 3
Fortune did not smile upon him as upon Davy ; everything
that he accomplished was the result of hard work. That
work, moreover, was always severely logical and systematic.
Davy's genius might, at times, flicker more brightly, but
Faraday's shone with a steadier ray.

The good fairies that clustered round Faraday's cradle
brought him, as will be seen, gifts as desirable, though not
so varied, as those for Davy, but another visitor was also
in evidence on this occasion the Demon King ! He
ordained that every time Faraday's labours led him to great
achievement or high honour, something would happen that
would spoil his enjoyment thereof. Davy had been Fortune's
favourite, Faraday was to be her football.

Michael Faraday's origin was even humbler than that
of Davy. His father, a blacksmith, and his mother, a farmer's
daughter, had left their native village of Clapham on the
lonely Yorkshire moors for London just before his birth, and
it was in an outlying Surrey suburb, Newington Butts, long
since swallowed up in the maw of the metropolis, that
Michael was born on 22 September 1791. His parents were
poor, and he received very little schooling. Yet his home
life and early associations must have been happy, for in
later years, on country vacations, he would stand a long
time under the spreading chestnut-tree to watch the sparks
fly at a local forge, and he was never ashamed of having
been e born and bred in a smithy.'

At the age of thirteen he entered the employment of

MICHAEL FARADAY

35

Mr Riebau, a bookseller and stationer, as an errand-boy.
His duties were to dust the place, black boots, take round
newspapers, and make himself useful generally. On Sunday
mornings he had to get up particularly early to complete
his tasks, for his parents belonged to the Sandemanians
a small but very serious religious body and attendance at
worship was strictly enforced.

FIG. 3 Riebau's bookshop

This bright-eyed boy, who c slid along the London pave
ments with a load of brown curls upon his head and a packet
of newspapers under his arm/ evidently gave his master
satisfaction, for in October 1805 he was formally apprenticed
for seven years to learn the arts of bookbinder, stationer and
bookseller, and, in consideration of his faithful service, no
premium was demanded. Faraday soon became an expert
bookbinder ; even when he was world-famous, indeed, he
continued to bind his own note-books. It is also interesting
to note his remark to one of his nieces many years later, on
passing a newspaper boy in the street : e I always feel a

36 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

tenderness for those boys, because I once carried news
papers myself.'

Young Michael did not restrict his attention, however,
to the outside of books. Here is what he himself says :

Whilst an apprentice I loved to read the scientific books
which were under my hands, and, amongst them, delighted in
Marcet's Conversations in Chemistry and the electrical treatises in
the Encyclopedia Britannica. I made such simple experiments in
chemistry as could be defrayed in their expense by a few pence
per week, and also constructed an electrical machine, first with
a glass phial, and afterwards with a real cylinder, as well as other
electrical apparatus of a corresponding kind.

My Master allowed me to go occasionally of an evening to
hear the lectures delivered by Mr Tatum on natural philosophy.
I obtained a knowledge of these lectures by bills in the streets
and shop windows. The hour was eight o'clock in the evening.
The charge was one shilling per lecture, and my brother Robert
[who was three years older and followed his father's business]
made me a present of the money.

Robert remained through life a warm friend and admirer
of his younger brother, and, although only a gasfitter,
frequently took advantage of the tickets which Michael sent
him to attend his own lectures. Frank Barnard has told
the following characteristic story about him :

One day he was sitting in the Royal Institution just previous
to a lecture by the young and rising philosopher, when he heard
a couple of gentlemen behind him descanting on the natural gifts
and rapid rise of the lecturer. The brother perhaps not fully
apprehending the purport of their talk listened with growing
indignation while one of them dilated on the lowness of Faraday's
origin. * Why,' said the speaker, e I believe he was a mere
shoeblack at one time.' Robert could endure this no longer ;
but turning sharply round he demanded : ' Pray, sir, did he
ever black your shoes ? ' ' Oh ! dear no, certainly not,' replied
the gentleman, much abashed.

In 1810 Faraday's father died, but this misfortune merely
strengthened the bonds between him and the rest of his

Sir Humphry Daw, in 1821
From the painting by Sir Thomas Lawrence

Michael Faraday in 1830
From the painting by H. W. Pickersgill

MICHAEL FARADAY 37

family. He looked forward to the end of his apprenticeship,
in order to share with his brother the responsibility of taking
care of his mother and sisters., but when his seven years
were up in October 1812, and he took service as a journey
man bookbinder under a French emigrant, De La Roche,
he became increasingly restless. De La Roche was a man
of acid temper, who made Michael most uncomfortable.

Some months before, through the kindness of Mr Dance,
a customer at Riebau's shop and a member of the Royal
Institution, he had been privileged to hear four of Sir
Humphry Davy's last series of lectures in Albemarle Street.
He sat in the gallery, under the clock, and was thrilled to
the marrow by Davy's eloquence and experimental skill.
He took notes, and then wrote out the lectures in a fuller
form, interspersed them with drawings, and bound them in
a quarto volume. He began himself to make c a few simple
galvanic experiments.' And finally, in sheer desperation, he
took the bull by the horns in December 1812 :

My desire to escape from trade, which I thought vicious
and selfish, and to enter into the service of Science, which I
imagined made its pursuers amiable and liberal, induced me at
last to take the bold and simple step of writing to Sir H. Davy x
expressing my wishes, and a hope that, if an opportunity came in
his way, he would favour my views ; at the same time, I sent
the notes I had taken of his lectures.

Now let us hear the other side of the story, as told by
Dr Gassiot :

Sir H. Davy was accustomed to call on the late Mr Pepys
in the Poultry, on his way to the London Institution, of which
Pepys was one of the original managers ; the latter told me that
on one occasion Sir H. Davy, showing him a letter, said, * Pepys,
what am I to do ? here is a letter from a young man named
Faraday ; he has been attending my lectures, and wants me to
give birn employment at the Royal Institution what can I

1 A similar letter to Sir Joseph Banks, then President of the Royal Society,
sent some months before, had been contemptuously ignored.

(369) 4

JFQUM LMCTWmmg

S"

Delivered. J>y

LLD, SecRS. FRSE.MRIA . MRI.

. EA.RADA. Y

FIG. 4 The title-page of the famous * Quarto Volume '

MICHAEL FARADAY 39

do ? ' e Do ? * replied Pepys, e put him to wash bottles ; if he
is good for anything he will do it directly ; if he refuses, he is
good for nothing.' c No, no/ replied Davy, ' we must try him
with something better than that.'

The upshot was that Davy, although he was then suffer
ing from the effects of a bad explosion in his laboratory,
which had seriously affected his eyes, sent Michael into the
seventh heaven of happiness, to his immortal credit, with
the following letter :

SIR, I am far from displeased with the proof you have
given me of your confidence, and which displays great zeal,
power of memory, and attention. I am obliged to go out of
Town, and shall not be settled in town till the end of January.
I will then see you at any time you wish. It would gratify me
to be of any service to you ; I wish it may be hi my power.

The momentous interview took place in the anteroom to
the lecture theatre of the Royal Institution. Davy had no
immediate position to offer the young enthusiast, and frankly
advised him to stick to the trade of bookbinding. That
Faraday made a good impression, however, is shown by the
fact that Davy promised to send him all the books that the
Royal Institution required to have bound, as well as his
own and those of as many of his friends as he could influence.
Shortly afterwards, too, his eyes becoming temporarily worse,
he engaged Michael for a few days to act as his secretary.

And then, one night, as Thompson states, c the humble
household in which Faraday lived with his widowed mother
was startled by the apparition of Sir Humphry Davy's grand
coach, from which a footman alighted and knocked loudly
at the door. For young Faraday, who was at that moment
undressing upstairs, he left a note from Sir Humphry request
ing him to call next morning.'

An emergency had arisen at the Royal Institution. Mr
Payne, Davy's assistant, had a disagreement with Mr New
man, the instrument-maker, and forgot himself so far as to
strike that gentleman ; his immediate dismissal was resolved

40 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

by the managers, and Faraday ' his habits seeming good,
his disposition active and cheerful, and his manner intelligent'
was offered the position at the same salary, twenty-five
shillings a week. Blessed be the short temper of Mr Payne,
and blessed be Mr Newman for giving him provocation !
Without their intervention Faraday might have bound
books all his life, and British chemistry would have lacked
its brightest star.

Not a moment did Faraday hesitate in his decision,
although De La Roche, who really liked him, promised to
make him his heir if he would remain, and although Sir
Humphry himself was doubtful whether he was justified in
making the change. Regarding Davy's attitude, Faraday
reports as follows :

At the same time that he thus gratified my desires as to
scientific employment, he still advised me not to give up the
prospects I had before me, telling me that Science was a harsh
mistress ; and in a pecuniary point of view but poorly rewarding
those who devoted themselves to her service. He smiled at my
notion of the superior moral feelings of philosophic men, and said
he would leave me to the experience of a few years to set me
right on that matter.

Unfortunately, as will transpire shortly, this statement
was to prove only too true. But for the present there was
not a single cloud on Michael's horizon. He was twenty-one,
he had entered the service of science and the service of his
scientific hero what more could life offer ?

Master and assistant appear to have spent the greater
part of that spring picking pieces of glass out of each other.
They were continuing Davy's experiments on ' the detonating
compound of chlorine and azote,' (now called nitrogen
trichloride), which had cost Dulong, its French discoverer,
an eye and three fingers, and which had already almost cost
Davy his eyesight. In a letter to his friend Abbott, dated
9 April 1813, Faraday writes :

MICHAEL FARADAY 4!

I have escaped (not quite unhurt) from four different and
strong explosions of the substance. Of these the most terrible
was when I was holding between my thumb and finger a small
tube containing y| grains of it. My face was within twelve inches
of the tube ; but I fortunately had on a glass mask. The explo
sion was so rapid as to blow my hand open, tear off a part of
one nail, and has made my fingers so sore that I cannot yet use
them easily. The pieces of tube were projected with such force
as to cut the glass face of the mask I had on. On repeating
the experiment this morning the tube and a receiver were blown
to pieces. I got a cut on my eyelid, and Sir H. bruised his hand.

The experiment was repeated again with a larger portion
of the substance. It stood for a moment or two, and then exploded
with a fearful noise : both Sir EL and I had masks on, but I
escaped this time the best. Sir H. had his face cut in two places
about the chin, and a violent blow on the forehead struck through
a considerable thickness of silk and leather ; and with this
experiment he has for the present concluded.

Lady Davy must have heaved a sigh of relief when her
queer bridegroom decided, in the early autumn, to take her
on the Continental tour described in the preceding chapter.
Even an enemy country must have seemed safer to her
than the laboratory of the Royal Institution ! Faraday,
who had never before travelled more than twelve miles
from London, accompanied Sir Humphry as his secretary
and scientific assistant.

He started the journey in the highest spirits, but it was
to hold more bitter for him than sweet. Sir Humphry's
valet, c diverted from his intention by the tears of his wife, 5
had refused to go with him at the last minute, and Michael
was asked ' to do those things which could not be trusted
to strangers or waiters * until the party arrived in Paris.
He felt somewhat unwilling to proceed on this plan, but
considering the advantages he would lose, and the short
time he would be thus embarrassed, he agreed. At Paris
Sir Humphry could find no servant to suit him ; let Faraday
himself continue the story in a letter written to Abbott from
Rome in February 1815 :

42 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

At Lyons he could not get one ; at Montpellier he could
not get one ; nor at Genoa, nor at Florence, nor at Rome, nor
in all Italy ; and I believe at last he did not wish to get one :
and we are just the same now as we were when we left England.
This of course throws things into my duty which it was not my
agreement, and is not my wish, to perform, but which are, if I
remain with Sir H., unavoidable. These, it is true, are very few ;
for having been accustomed in early years to do for himself, he
continues to do so at present and he leaves very little for a valet
to perform ; and as he knows that it is not pleasing to me, and
that I do not consider myself as obliged to do them, he is always
as careful as possible to keep those things from me which he
knows would be disagreeable. But Lady Davy is of another
humour. She likes to show her authority, and at first I found
her extremely earnest in mortifying me. This occasioned quarrels
between us, at each of which I gained ground, and she lost it ;
for the frequency made me care nothing about them, and weak
ened her authority, and after each she behaved in a milder
manner.

In another letter he states :

I should have but little to complain of were I travelling with
Sir Humphry alone, or were Lady Davy like him ; but her
temper makes it oftentimes go wrong with me, with herself,
and with Sir H.

As Davy remarked later to his brother regarding his
family worries : c In this world we all have to suffer and
bear, and from Socrates down to humble mortals, domestic
discomfort seems a sort of philosophical fate.' With Faraday,
it was the name more than the duties of valet that hurt,
and the opportunity that it afforded Lady Davy to vent her
spleen upon him in all kinds of petty ways. c I fancy that
when I set my foot in England, 3 he wrote to Abbott, * I shall
never take it out again. I am certain, if I could have fore
seen the things that have passed, I should never have left
London.' He even thought of going back to bookbinding
on his return, so sharp was his disillusionment.

The truth was that neither Davy himself, and still less

MICHAEL FARADAY 43

Lady Davy, could appreciate the fact that Michael was not
a mere mechanic any longer, but had already become a
scientist in his own right. The chemists of Paris were more
keen-sighted ; they admired Davy, but they loved Faraday.
At Geneva, Sir Humphry's party was entertained by De La
Rive, who, with his distinguished son, was a close friend of
Faraday in later years, and the following incident occurred :

Host and guest were sportsmen, and they frequently went
out shooting. On these occasions Faraday loaded Davy's gun,
and for a time he had his meals with the servants. From nature
Faraday had received the warp and woof of a gentleman, and
this, added to his bright intelligence, soon led De La Rive to
the discovery that he was Davy's laboratory assistant, not his
servant. Somewhat shocked at the discovery, De La Rive pro
posed that Faraday should dine with the family, instead of with
the domestics. To this Lady Davy demurred, and De La Rive
met the case by sending Faraday's meals to his own room.

No wonder that Faraday's fiery spirit so chafed under
his treatment as a menial that he was frequently on the
point of returning alone. He possessed his soul in patience,
however. The boy who had never enjoyed any real educa
tion could not, deep as his discomforts might be, forgo the
opportunity, granted to few university graduates, of sharpen
ing his mind by daily contact with the best scientific brains
of Europe. It was a vastly different Michael from the one
who so joyfully left England in October 1813 who finally
wrote to his mother from Brussels in April 1815 : * Before
you read this letter I hope to tread on British ground, which
I will never leave again.' Napoleon's escape from Elba had
rushed the travellers home ; Waterloo had not been fought
when Faraday's salary at the Royal Institution was raised
to thirty shillings a week.

He was soon busily engaged, as Davy's assistant, in the
experimental development of the miner's safety-lamp. Not
only did he help Davy in the laboratory, but he made him-

44 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

self responsible for keeping an accurate record of everything
that was done. Thompson states :

He preserved every note and manuscript of Davy's with
religious care. He copied out Davy's scrawled researches in
a neat clear delicate handwriting, begging only for his pains to
be allowed to keep the originals, which he bound in two quarto
volumes.

With justice might Davy say, in his preface to his paper
on the safety-lamp : c I am myself indebted to Mr Michael
Faraday for much able assistance in the prosecution of my
experiments.'

Faraday was always devoted to his master and ready to
defend him against the slightest attack ; he considered the
Stephenson controversy regarding priority in the invention
of the safety-lamp a * disgraceful subject.' But loyalty to
scientific truth, for him, preceded even loyalty to Davy.
The early models of the Davy lamp had their defects and
did not provide security under all circumstances, and when
Faraday was asked once before a Parliamentary Committee
whether under certain conditions the safety-lamp would
become unsafe, he admitted immediately that such was the
case. Davy was furious with him, but could not induce
him to retract.

At this time, also, he was quietly subjecting himself to
a severe course of self-education, with the special object of
becoming, like Davy, a skilful and fluent lecturer. His
recorded notes, dealing with every aspect of the topic of
lecturing and dating almost from his very entry into the
Royal Institution, are as voluminous as they are interesting.
He delivered his first lecture before the City Philosophical
Society in January 1816 on ( The General Properties of
Matter. 3 In 1823 he was unexpectedly called upon to dep
utise for Professor Brande, Davy's humdrum successor as
Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution, at one of
his morning lectures. Ultimately he became recognised, for
a period of over thirty years, as a lecturer without a rival.

MICHAEL FARADAY 45

His own scientific work developed slowly, in contrast
with that of Davy, but steadily and surely. He published
his first independent paper in the Quarterly Journal of Science
in 1816. During the next few years the flow increased signi
ficantly, but his first important discovery two new com
pounds of chlorine and carbon, one of which is now used
extensively in fire-extinguishers was announced to the
Royal Society in 1820. In the same year he carried out
some interesting experiments on steel alloys, and occasion
ally in later life he would present one of his friends with
a razor made from his own c silver steel.' A case of razors
from the manufacturers, it may be noted, was the only
practical reward he ever received for this work, although
exact analysis of some of his specimens by Sir Robert Had-
field indicates that he prepared what may be considered
the first samples of stainless steel.

In June 1821, his official salary now being 100 a year
(he supplemented this by private teaching and consulting
work in order to help to maintain his mother and pay for
the education of his younger sister), he took to the two rooms
which he occupied at the top of the Royal Institution a bride,
Sarah Barnard, a fellow-Sandemanian. It is characteristic
of Faraday's simplicity that he asked few people to the
wedding, and that he directed that c there will be no bustle,
no noise, no hurry ; the day will be just like any other
day ; it is in the heart that we expect and look for pleasure. 5

The marriage, though childless, was ideally happy.
Thompson remarks upon it as follows :

Mrs Faraday proved to be exactly the true helpmeet for
his need ; and he loved her to the end of his life with a chivalrous
devotion which has become almost a proverb. Little indications
of his attachment crop up in unexpected places in his subsequent
career. Tyndall, in after years, made the intensity of Faraday's
attachment to his wife the subject of a striking simile : ' Never,
I believe, existed a manlier, purer, steadier love. Like a burning
diamond, it continued to shed, for six and forty years, its white
and smokeless glow.*

4.6 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

Trouble was in store for the happy bridegroom, however,
and it broke upon him in a most unjustified manner. The
great Danish physicist, Oersted, had made in 1820 the
fundamental discovery that, if a compass is suspended near
a wire carrying an electric current, it is deflected. Dr
Wollaston, a friend of Sir Humphry Davy, had the idea
that there should also be a tendency, when the pole of a
magnet was presented towards a wire carrying an electric
current, for that wire to twist around upon its own axis, and
in April 1821 he came to Davy's laboratory at the Royal
Institution to make the experiment. Faraday was not there
at the time, and did not see the experiment fail, but coming
in shortly afterwards he heard their conversation on the
matter.

In the summer of the same year Faraday was asked to
write an historical sketch on electro-magnetism for the
Annals of Philosophy, and he repeated himself most of the
experiments he described therein. This led him, in Sep
tember, towards the first of his epoch-making discoveries in
this field that a wire carrying an electric current would
rotate around a magnet over which it was suspended.
Before publishing this discovery, Faraday tried to see Dr
Wollaston in order to ask permission to refer to his views
and experiments, but Dr Wollaston was out of town, and
Faraday's paper was accordingly published in the Quarterly
Journal of Science in October without any allusion to him.
Immediately afterwards rumours spread abroad for which
Davy, it is to be feared, was partly responsible c affecting
Faraday's honour and honesty ' ; he was accused of stealing
Wollaston's original idea. Promptly and frankly Faraday
appealed to Wollaston himself, and invited him to visit his
laboratory to view his actual results. Wollaston came to
see him several times, and the charge, for a period, appeared
to die away. It was, unfortunately, to come up again two
years later.

To the layman it may seem that this was a storm in
a teacup, and that the point at issue was merely trivial.

MICHAEL FARADAY 47

Let it be noted, however, that this discovery of Faraday's
was the initial step in his main life-work, the twenty-nine
series of Experimental Researches in Electricity and Magnetism
that were destined to occupy the greater part of his later
years and that have meant more for mankind than the work
of any other scientist who has ever lived. What a tragedy
it would have been if Faraday, through this misunderstand
ing, had been forced to abandon scientific research ! What
marvellous benefits the world would have missed ! Here
is an extract, in this connection, from an address given at
Oxford in 1926 by the Duke of Windsor, then Prince of
Wales, in his capacity as President of the British Association
for the Advancement of Science :

Faraday's labours provide one of the most wonderful examples
of scientific research leading to enormous industrial development.
Upon his discovery of benzene and its structure the great chemical
industries of today are largely based, including, in particular, the
dyeing industries. Still wider applications have followed upon
his discovery of the laws of electrolysis and of the mechanical
generation of electricity. It has been said, with reason, that
the two million workers in Great Britain only who are dependent
upon electrical industries are living on the brain of Faraday ;
but to his discoveries in the first instance many millions more
owe the uses of electricity in lighting, traction, communication
and industrial power.

The year 1822 proved to be a placid one, but 1823 was
to witness a second and much more disagreeable storm in
Faraday's relations with Sir Humphry Davy. The story of
its origin has been told by Dr Paris as follows :

I had been invited to dine with Sir Humphry Davy, on
Wednesday the 5th of March 1823, for the purpose of meeting
the Reverend Uriah Tonkin, the heir of his early friend and
benefactor of that name. On quitting my house for that purpose,
I perceived that I had time to spare, and I accordingly called in
on my way at the Royal Institution. Upon descending into the
laboratory I found Mr Faraday engaged in experiments on
chlorine and its hydrate in closed tubes. It appeared to me

48 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

that the tube in which he was operating upon this substance
contained some oily matter, and I rallied him upon the careless
ness of employing soiled vessels. Mr Faraday, upon inspecting
the tube, acknowledged the justness of my remark, and expressed
his surprise at the circumstance. In consequence of which, he
immediately proceeded to file off the sealed end ; when, to our
great astonishment, the contents suddenly exploded, and the
oily matter vanished !

Mr Faraday was completely at a loss to explain the occurrence,
and proceeded to repeat the experiment with a view to its
elucidation. I was unable, however, to remain and witness
the result.

Upon mentioning the circumstance to Sir Humphry Davy
after dinner, he appeared much surprised ; and after a few
moments of apparent abstraction, he said, c I shall enquire about
this experiment tomorrow. 5

Early on the next morning I received from Mr Faraday the
following laconic note :

DEAR SIR,

The oil you noticed yesterday turns out to be liquid chlorine.
Yours faithfully,

M. FARADAY.

To understand the situation that now developed it is
necessary to add another extract from the Life of Sir Humphry
Davy by Dr Paris :

It is well known that, before the year 1810, the solid substance
obtained by exposing chlorine, as usually procured, to a low
temperature, was considered as the gas itself reduced into that
form : Sir Humphry Davy, however, corrected this error, and
first showed it to be a hydrate, the pure gas not being condensable
even at a temperature of 40 Fahrenheit.

Mr Faraday had taken advantage of the cold season to
procure crystals of this hydrate, and was proceeding in its analysis,
when Sir Humphry Davy suggested to him the expediency of
observing what would happen if it were heated in a closed vessel ;
but this suggestion was made in consequence of the inspection
of results already obtained by Mr Faraday, and which must have
led him to the experiment in question, had he never communi
cated with Sir Humphry Davy upon the subject. This avowal
is honestly due to Mr Faraday.

MICHAEL FARADAY 49

Sir Humphry, however, had entirely different ideas on
the matter. He moved with typical rapidity :

On the morning [Thursday, March 6th] after Mr Faraday
had condensed chlorine. Sir Humphry Davy had no sooner
witnessed the result, than he called for a strong glass tube, and,
having placed in it a quantity of muriate of ammonia and sul
phuric acid, and then sealed the end, he caused them to act
upon each other, and thus condensed the muriatic acid, which
was evolved, into a liquid. The condensation of carbonic acid
gas, nitrous oxide gas, and several others, were in succession
treated with similar success.

A week later, before Faraday's account of the liquefac
tion of chlorine could be printed, Davy read a note to the
Royal Society on these experiments, and, when Faraday's
article appeared in April in the Philosophical Transactions,
Davy appended a postscript in which he essentially claimed
the whole subject as his own.

There has been considerable diversity of opinion among
chemical historians regarding this episode ; some consider
that Davy's conduct was most reprehensible, others that he
c acted generously ' ! Since we can never know for certain
whether Davy really had in mind, from the start of his in
structions to Faraday, the possibility of obtaining liquid
chlorine, and since also we can never know whether Faraday
would have immediately deduced, as Davy did, that he had
discovered a general method for the liquefaction of gases,
it is probably best to divide the credit between them. It
is interesting to note, in any case, that this same important
field of investigation became, much later, still more closely
identified with the laboratory of the Royal Institution
through the brilliant work of another of its professors of
chemistry, Sir James Dewar, the inventor of the thermos
flask.

Amazingly enough, Faraday learned shortly afterwards
that neither he nor Davy had the merit of first condensing
chlorine ; Northmore had unintentionally done it nearly

50 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

twenty years before ! Faraday hastened to perform what
he thought right, and published an historical account of
the liquefaction of gases in which he stated that he
had great pleasure in spontaneously doing justice and
honour to those who deserved it. Davy preserved a dead
silence.

The incident was by no means ended ; it still rankled,
and rumours were rife. Poor Faraday, it is true, who had
undergone considerable danger in doing the experiments, 1
was quite philosophical about the matter, as will be
evident from the following statement which he made
later :

I have never remarked upon or denied Sir H. Davy's right
to his share of the condensation of chlorine or the other gases ;
on the contrary, I think that I long ago did him full e justice'
in the papers themselves. How could it be otherwise ? He saw
and revised the manuscripts ; through his hands they went to
the Royal Society, of which he was President at the time ; and
he saw and revised the printer's proofs. Although he did not
tell me of his expectations when he suggested the heating the
crystals in a closed tube, yet I have no doubt that he had them ;
and though perhaps I regretted losing my subject, I was too much
indebted to him lor much previous kindness to think of saying
that that was mine which he said was his. But observe (for my
sake), that Sir H. Davy nowhere states that he told me what
he expected, or contradicts the passages in the first paper of
mine which describe my course of thought, and in which I claim
the development of the actual results.

Davy, on the other hand, clearly began now to be
violently jealous of Faraday's rising reputation, and used

1 Here is a letter which he wrote on 23 March 1823 :

* DEAR HOXTABLE, I met with another explosion on Saturday evening,
which has again laid up my eyes. It was from one of my tubes, and was so
powerful as to drive the pieces of glass like pistol-shot through a window.
However, I am getting better, and expect to see as well as ever in a few days.
My eyes were filled with glass at first."

MICHAEL FARADAY 5!

this opportunity to resurrect the old Wollaston scandal.
Faraday had been, just about this time, put forward as a
candidate for the Fellowship of the Royal Society Wollaston
being the very first of his twenty-nine proposers and Sir Humphry
should have been among the foremost in pressing his claims
to election. Instead of this, he used his position as President
of the Society to oppose Faraday tooth and nail. Here is
what Faraday himself reports :

Sir H. Davy told me I must take down my certificate. I
replied that I had not put it up ; that I could not take it down,
as it was put up by my proposers. He then said I must get my
proposers to take it down. I answered that I knew they would
not do so. Then he said, I as President will take it down. I
replied that I was sure Sir H. Davy would do what he thought
was for he good of the Royal Society.

Admire the moderation and dignity of Faraday's replies ;
however unreasonably Sir Humphry might behave he was
not to be betrayed into losing his temper ! It is pleasant
to record that Faraday's certificate was not taken down and,
when the ballot took place in January 1824, he was elected
F.R.S., only one black ball being recorded against him.
Let us pray that this single black ball did not drop from
the hand of Sir Humphry Davy.

Although the hatchet was soon buried, the relations
between the two men could naturally never 'be the same
as before. For reasons of health, Sir Humphry resigned
his Honorary Professorship at the Royal Institution, stating
that c he considered the talents and services of Mr Faraday
entitled to some mark of approbation from the managers.'
Faraday was accordingly advanced, in 1825, to the post
of Director of the Laboratory, his salary remaining at 100 ;
henceforth all his scientific work was to be carried out
independently and alone. It has been urged against him
that he never took up any younger man to train as his
successor, as Davy had trained him. The complaint is
unfounded ; Faraday fell into Davy's hands unsought, like

52 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

manna from heaven, but one of his own miscellaneous notes,
found after his death, states : ' I have looked long and
often for a genius for our Laboratory, but have never
found one.'

Michael was now thirty-three and no longer, strictly
speaking, a c young chemist/ although he remained young
at heart all his life ; his subsequent career will accordingly
be described in less detail. Just before his appointment as
director, he had made what the later development of organic
chemistry was destined to convert into his greatest purely
chemical discovery the isolation of the * bicarburet of
hydrogen. 3

Faraday obtained this substance as follows. At that
period, considerable quantities of gas for household illumina
tion were manufactured in Great Britain by decomposing
whale-oil at a red heat ; this gas was stored in portable iron
cylinders under a pressure of 30 atmospheres. Sir Walter
Scott, it may be noted, was the chairman of an oil-ga
company at Edinburgh, and used the gas to illuminate his
house at Abbotsford. Under compression, oil-gas was
observed to deposit a certain amount of fluid, and some of
this fluid was sent to Faraday for analysis. Faraday found
it to be a very complex mixture of substances, but by dis
tilling it and collecting the products of distillation at different
temperatures in separate receivers he broke it up into a
number of fractions, ranging from a very limpid liquid to
a thick syrup. From certain of the middle fractions, on
cooling in a c frigorific mixture ' of ice and salt, beautiful
white crystals deposited, and these crystals could be obtained
pure by squeezing out their adhering mother-liquor in a
filter-press. They were crystals of the * bicarburet of hydro
gen/ which fortunately, alone of all the many hydrocarbons
in those particular fractions, possesses a melting-point higher
than that of water. This compound, now known as benzene,
is the parent substance today of a veritable army of dyes
and drugs ; it is probably the most important of all the

MICHAEL FARADAY 53

hundreds of thousands of organic compounds that chemists
have isolated.

Faraday took his new duties as Director of the Laboratory
of the Royal Institution most seriously. He initiated the
famous * Friday evening meetings ' of the members, and
of the seventeen discourses delivered thereat in 1826 he
gave six himself. He widened the appeal of the Royal
Institution still further by means of c Christmas Courses of
Lectures adapted to a Juvenile Auditory.' In 1827 he was
offered the Professorship of Chemistry in the University
of London, but declined the appointment in the following
words :

I think it a matter of duty and gratitude on my part to do
what I can for the good of the Royal Institution in the present
attempt to establish it firmly. The Institution has been a source
of knowledge and pleasure to me for the last fourteen years ;
and though it does not pay me in salary what I now strive to do
for it, yet I possess the kind feelings and goodwill of its authorities
and members, and all the privileges it can grant or I require ;
and, moreover, I remember the protection it has afforded me
during the past years of my scientific life. These circumstances,
with the thorough conviction that it is a useful and valuable
establishment, and the strong hopes that exertions will be followed
with success, have decided me in giving at least two years more
to it, in the belief that after that time it will proceed well, into
whatever hands it may pass.

The Royal Institution was to have the privilege of retain
ing his services, as it happened, not for two, but for nearly
forty years longer, but in the summer of 1831 he found
himself forced to make a most weighty decision. He had
spent much time since 1825, as a member of a Royal Society
committee for the investigation of optical glass, in experi
mental work designed to lead to great improvements in
telescopes. This work had mainly proved abortive, although
sundry scientific uses for a new c heavy glass * which he
invented, consisting essentially of boro-silicate of lead, have
since been devised. His growing fame had resulted in

(969) 6

54 GkEAt DISCOVERIES BY YOtJNG CHEMISTS

constantly increasing demands upon him from chemical
manufacturers for analytical work and for expert advice
in the Law Courts. All this, combined with his official
responsibilities, which he never neglected, gave him little
opportunity to indulge in his most absorbing occupation
original research. Resolved that research should no longer
be subordinated to other interests, he determined to abandon
his private consulting practice entirely.

The sacrifice was not a small one, for his professional
fees in 1830 had amounted to 1,000, while his salary from
the Royal Institution remained at c 100 per annum, house,
coals, and candles. 3 x True, he had also been appointed,
in 1829, lecturer on chemistry at the Royal Academy at
Woolwich, from which he received 200 for twenty lectures
annually, but even so his resolution reduced him from
affluence to comparative poverty. Poor Sarah must have
dreaded a return to the old times when he had deprived
himself of dinner every other day to send his younger sister
to boarding-school, for his aged mother too was still entirely
dependent upon him. Yet she cheerfully acquiesced, and
how much richer the world is today because Faraday refused
to tread the road to riches !

And so he began, on 29 August 1831, the full record of
each day's results being faithfully transcribed in his note
books, his monumental series of Experimental Researches in
Electricity and Magnetism. These were to demand his un
remitting toil, with several interruptions due to breakdowns
in health he suffered much, alas, from loss of memory in
later life for more than twenty years. Their significance
to the human race today has already been indicated ;
electric light, electric power, the telegraph, the telephone,

1 At this time, it must in justice be mentioned 3 the Royal Institution itself
was passing through acute financial difficulties. * We are living on the parings
of our own skin/ Faraday once told the managers. In 1833, however, Mr
Fuller founded a Professorship of Chemistry at the Royal Institution with
a salary of 100 a year, and Faraday was appointed for life to this position
also.

MICHAEL FA&ADAY 55

wireless communication all owe their development to the
fundamental principles of electricity and magnetism, and
of their interrelation, established by Faraday.

What is, perhaps, most astounding of all, in connection
with his great discoveries in this field, is that they were
made by a man with so meagre a formal education that he
did not know more than the merest elements of arithmetic.
The higher mathematics were to him a sealed book ; not
a single formula is included in all his mass of publications.
Yet when Clerk Maxwell, the great mathematical physicist,
made an intensive theoretical study of Faraday's Lines of
Force in 1855, he demonstrated that Faraday's deductions
from his experimental results were correct to the most
minute detail. Men of lesser rank might deplore the
fact that Faraday's records were difficult to read and
understand ; the fault was theirs, not Faraday's. He,
who was ignorant of mathematics, was in advance of the
mathematics of his time. After his death Clerk Maxwell
wrote :

After nearly half a century of labour, we may say that,
though the practical applications of Faraday's discovery have
increased and are increasing in number and value every year,
no exception to the statement of these laws as given by Faraday
has been discovered, no new law has been added to them, and
Faraday's original statement remains to this day the only one
which asserts no more than can be verified by experiment, and
the only one by which the theory of the phenomena can be
expressed in a manner which is exactly and numerically accurate,
and at the same time within the range of elementary methods
of exposition.

The practical applications of Faraday's researches did
not, however, immediately become manifest. He was
constantly reproached for wasting his time on work which
had no useful object, when there were so many more im
portant scientific problems clamouring for solution. To the
query, c But what's the use of it ? * so frequently put to him
by visitors to his laboratory he was very fond of repeating

56 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

the reply that Benjamin Franklin used to make to his friends
who questioned him regarding his foolish experiments on
c lightning * : ' What's the use of a baby ? Some day it will
grow up ! 5 Faraday's scientific babies certainly have grown
up, and yet they are still growing.

Once, indeed, he did vary his answer. Lecky relates
that on one occasion Faraday was endeavouring to explain
to Mr Gladstone and several others an important step in
his investigations. Mr Gladstone, then Chancellor of the
Exchequer, merely commented : ' But, after all, what use
is it ? ' Quick as a flash came Faraday's retort : ' Why,
sir, there is every probability that you will soon be able to
tax it ! ' Again the probability has become a fact, Faraday's
discoveries now contribute hundreds of millions of pounds
annually to the British Exchequer.

Recognition from the Government, nevertheless, of the
value of his work was difficult to secure. Long before his
encounter with Gladstone, Faraday had had a most humiliat
ing experience in this connection, yet an experience from
which he emerged with supreme credit.

Early in 1835 the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel, had
decided that Faraday's scientific services amply merited a
pension from the Civil List ; e I am sure,' he wrote, c no
man living has a better claim to consideration from the
State. 3 Faraday's first reaction, so independent was his
spirit, was to decline point-blank, but yielding to the judg
ment of his father-in-law (for whom he always entertained
the highest respect, and than whom no-one could have a
more intimate knowledge of the straitened circumstances
under which he was living) he modified his refusal. Before
the matter could be finally adjusted. Peel's government was
defeated., and Faraday heard no more about his pension
until October, when he was commanded to wait upon the
new Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne. An interview took
place, in the course of which Lord Melbourne, prejudiced
against Faraday only because he was a protege of Peel,
roundly denounced the whole system of giving pensions to

MICHAEL FARADAY 57

scientific and literary persons, which he looked upon as
6 a piece of humbug. 3 The last word was prefixed by an
adjective that is simply described in Faraday's diary he
was always deeply religious as c theological/

Melbourne had mistaken his man. Faraday was not
prepared to be browbeaten, he was not going to cringe.
Quietly he withdrew, and that same evening he left this
note, with his card, at Lord Melbourne's office :

MY LORD, The conversation with which your Lordship
honoured me this afternoon, including, as it did, your Lord
ship's opinion of the general character of the pensions given
of late to scientific persons, induces me respectfully to decline
the favour which I believe your Lordship intends for me ; for
I feel that I could not, with satisfaction to myself, accept at
your Lordship's hands that which, though it has the form of
approbation, is of the character which your Lordship so pithily
applied to it.

Faraday's friends, prominent among whom was Sir James
South, were indignant when they heard what had happened.
The story got into the papers, and eventually reached the
ears of the King, William IV, as related by Eraser's Magazine
for December 1835 ^ follows :

Soon after these incidents, Lady Mary Fox chanced to visit
Sir James South, on whose table she saw a small electrifying
machine with a ticket on it indicating that c The machine . . .
is the first of which Faraday ever came into possession.' It stood
when he was a youth in an optician's window in Fleet Street,
and was offered for sale at the cost of 45 6d ; yet such was the low
state of Faraday's finances that he could not purchase it. Many
a day he came to the window to gaze and went away again
bitterly lamenting his own poverty, not because it subjected him
to bodily inconvenience, but because it threatened to exclude
him for ever from the path of science and usefulness, on which
he longed to enter. At last he did succeed in purchasing it, and
he had now presented it to Sir James South.

Lady Mary was greatly touched, and arranged that the
whole story should be repeated to the bluff old sailor King.

58 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

He was so affected by the tale of Faraday's early struggles
against poverty that he shed tears. c That man deserves all
the pension that Peel promised/ he exclaimed, * and he shall
have it too. 5 And so Faraday, after all, was induced to
accept a pension of 300 a year : ' Not/ as Fraser's Magazine
stated, ' as a gift from the Whig Cabinet, but directly from
the King/

This is not the place to discuss the scientific aspects of
Faraday's later researches ; they lie chiefly, indeed, outside
the domain of chemistry proper. When, however, he did
re-enter the bounds of chemistry, he still showed all his
former genius. The modern branch of the subject known
as electrochemistry is largely founded, in point of fact, on
Faraday's work. He even invented, with the help of his
classical friend Whewell, practically its whole terminology,
as used today, in order to describe the phenomena that he
was investigating. The substance decomposed by an electric
current he called an electrolyte ; the process of decomposition
electrolysis. The c poles,' being in his view merely the doors
through which the current passes, he termed electrodes, distin
guishing the entrance and exit as anode (the way up) and
cathode (the way down) respectively. Those products of de
composition which go to the anode he named amons, those
passing to the cathode, cations ; when he had occasion to
speak of both together, he called them ions (literally,
travellers) .

His fundamental law of electrochemistry states that
fi equal quantities of electricity discharge equivalent quan
tities of the ions at the two electrodes, whatever those ions
may be. 3 Having established this fundamental law upon
an impregnable basis of experimental facts, he proceeded
to discuss its theoretical implications :

The equivalent weights of bodies are simply those quantities
of them which contain equal quantities of electricity, or have
naturally equal electric powers ; it being the electricity which

MICHAEL FARADAY 59

petermines the equivalent number, because it determines the com
bining force. Or, if we adopt the atomic theory or phraseology,
then the atoms of bodies which are equivalents to each other in
their ordinary chemical action, have equal quantities of electricity
naturally associated with them.

Here, as Thompson remarks, although Faraday confessed
that he was jealous of the term atom, we have the germ
of the modern doctrine of electrons or unitary atomic electrical
charges, clearly formulated in 1834 !

With the passing years Faraday became more and more
engrossed in his researches. His diary records how they
drove him gradually into virtual seclusion after 1834 he
declined ' all dining out or invitations,' after 1838 he c saw
no-one three days in the week.' He paid the penalty of
overwork by a serious breakdown in 1839, an d for a few
years he was compelled to take an almost complete rest.
During this period he spent several happy vacations with
his wife in Switzerland ; here is an extract from a letter
which she wrote to a friend on one of these trips :

He certainly enjoys the country exceedingly, and though at
first he lamented our absence from home and friends very much,
he seems now to be reconciled to it as a means of improving his
general health. His strength is, however, very good ; he thinks
nothing of walking thirty miles in a day (and very rough walking
it is, you know), and one day he walked forty-five, which I pro
tested against his doing again, though he was very little the
worse for it. But the grand thing is rest and relaxation of mind,
which he is really taking,

In his own journal he notes at Interlaken in 1841 :

Clout-nail making goes on here rather considerably, and is
a very neat and pretty operation to observe. I love a smith's
shop, and anything relating to smithery. My father was a smith.

By 1844 he was well enough to resume work, and in
October of that year he was called upon to report upon an
explosion that had just occurred in the Haswell Colliery,

60 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

with, terrible loss of life. Davy's invention of the safety-lamp
had unfortunately not prevented such disasters entirely ;
increased protection had induced increased carelessness, and
how reprehensible such carelessness had become is evidenced
from the following story by Sir Charles Lyell, the renowned
geologist, who accompanied Faraday on this investigation :

We spent eight hours, not without danger, in exploring the
galleries where the chief loss of life had been incurred. Among
other questions, Faraday asked in what way they measured the
rate at which the current of air flowed in the mine. An inspector
took a small pinch of gunpowder out of a box, as he might have
taken a pinch of snuff, and allowed it to fall gradually through
the flame of a candle which he held in the other hand. His
companion, with a watch, marked the time the smoke took going
a certain distance. Faraday admitted that this plan was suffi
ciently accurate for their purpose ; but, observing the somewhat
careless manner in which they handled their powder, he asked
where they kept it. They said they kept it in a bag, the neck
of which was tied up tight. ' But where,' said he, c do you keep
the bag ? 5 c You are sitting on it, 5 was the reply.

His kindness of heart is illustrated by a second extract
from the same source :

Hearing that a subscription had been opened for the widows
and orphans of the men who had perished by the explosion, I
found, on inquiry, that Faraday had already contributed largely.
On speaking to him on the subject, he apologised for having done
so without mentioning it to me, saying that he did not wish me
to feel myself called upon to subscribe because he had done so.

In 1845 ne was absorbed once more in his electrical
investigations, and continued to work at them like a Trojan
so long as his health permitted. By 1 855 they were essentially
completed, but at intervals the grand old man still insisted
on strenuous attempts at research. His very last experiment
was recorded in his note-book on 12 March 1862.

He recognised himself that he was rapidly failing, and
in 1857 he declined the Presidency of the Royal Society,
just as he had declined the honour of knighthood years before.

MICHAEL FARADAY 6 1

s Tyndall, 3 he said to his successor at the Royal Institution,
4 1 must remain plain Michael Faraday to the last/

In 1858 Queen Victoria, at the suggestion of the Prince
Consort, who esteemed Faraday most highly, provided him
with a comfortable house on the Green at Hampton Court,
thereby recompensing him for an annoying calamity which
she had unwittingly brought upon him some time before.
As already noted, Faraday was brought up a strict Sande-
manian by his parents, and in 1840 he had been elected an
elder of that Church. As such, he preached to the con
gregation on alternate weeks, and was required to attend
church, without fail, every Sunday. Thompson relates as
follows :

One Sunday Faraday was absent. When it was discovered
that his absence was due to his having been ' commanded * to
dine with the Queen at Windsor, and that so far from expressing
penitence, he was prepared to defend his action, his office became
vacant. He was even cut off from ordinary membership. Never
theless, he continued for years to attend the meetings just as
before. He would even return from the provincial meetings of
the British Association to London for the Sunday, so as not to
be absent. In 1860 he was received back as an elder.

At Hampton Court the twilight of his life, in the close
companionship of his beloved Sarah, was tranquil and
happy. He was, so he told his friends, e just waiting.' He
passed away peacefully and painlessly, sitting on the chair
in his study, on 25 August 1867.

It would be a mistake to suppose that Faraday was a
* model of all the virtues,' dreary and uninteresting in his
calm perfection to the ordinary run of mortals. On the
contrary, he was intensely human. True, he lacked the
romantic attractiveness of Davy, but he lacked also every
trace of snobbery.

His most characteristic quality, perhaps, was boyish
enthusiasm, which he retained to the very end of his life.

62 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

Here is a reminiscence taken from the Memorials of the
famous American physicist, Joseph Henry :

Henry loved to dwell on the hours that he and Bache had
spent in Faraday's society. I shall never forget Henry's account
of his visit to King's College, London, where Faraday, Wheat-
stone, Daniell, and he had met to try and evolve the electric
spark from the thermopile. Each in turn attempted it and
failed. Then came Henry's turn. He succeeded, calling in the
aid of his discovery of the effect of a long interpolar wire wrapped
around a piece of soft iron. Faraday became as wild as a boy,
and, jumping up, shouted : * Hurrah for the Yankee experi
ment ! '

Faraday would have made, in fact, a wonderful
American ; his nature was probably nearer to Abraham
Lincoln's than to that of any other person of his period.
Simple pleasures always appealed to him most. His wife's
youngest brother, George Barnard, the artist, says :

All the years I was with Harding I dined at the Royal Institu
tion. After dinner we nearly always had our games just like
boys sometimes at ball, or with horse chestnuts instead of
marbles Faraday appearing to enjoy them as much as I did,
and generally excelling us all. Sometimes we rode round the
theatre on a velocipede, which was then a new thing. 1

He enjoyed taking sketching trips with his wife, picnics
on the river with theatrical and musical friends followed
by choruses and charades, playing on the flute, watching
a blackbird feed its young and lambs trying to find their
mothers, romping with his niece anything, in short, that
was informal and c unfashionable.' Let his niece, Miss Reid,
continue the catalogue herself :

1 * It was probably in a four-wheeled velocipede that Faraday was accus
tomed, some thirty years ago, to work his way up and down the steep roads
near Hampstead and Highgate. This machine appears to have been of his
own construction, and was worked by levers and a crank axle in the same
manner as the rest of the four-wheeled class.' The Velocipede : its past, its
present, its future. By J. F. B. Firth. London, 1869

MICHAEL FARADAY 63

After I went, in 1826, to stay at the Royal Institution, when
my aunt was going out (as I was too little to be left alone), she
would occasionally take me down to the laboratory, and leave
me under my uncle's eye, whilst he was busy preparing his lectures.
I had of course to sit as still as a mouse, with my needle- work ;
but he would often stop and give me a kind word or a nod, or
sometimes throw a bit of potassium into water to amuse me.

Often of an evening they would go to the Zoological Gardens
and find interest in all the animals, especially the new arrivals,
though he was always much diverted by the tricks of the monkeys.
We have seen him laugh till the tears ran down his cheeks as he
watched them. He never missed seeing the wonderful sights of
the day acrobats and tumblers, giants and dwarfs ; even Punch
and Judy was an unfailing source of delight, whether he looked
at the performance or at the admiring gaping crowd.

Even in his beloved science, one of the details in which
he took the greatest delight was the c Christmas Course of
Lectures adapted to a Juvenile Auditory/ which he in
augurated at the Royal Institution in 1826. Nineteen times
in all did Faraday himself deliver this course of lectures, and
the plate facing page 72 shows him giving the first lecture
of a series on c Metals ' on 27 December 1855. The Prince
Consort is in the chair, and his sons, the Prince of
Wales (afterwards King Edward VII) and Prince Alfred
(the Duke of Edinburgh), are on either side of him. Faraday
was most impressed by the keenness of the schoolboys and
schoolgirls who attended these lectures. As soon as he had
finished, they came rushing up to his table to ask questions
and to see the experiments. e Those who like it best come
first, and they so crowd round the lecture table as to shut
out the others.'

Two brief impressions of these lectures may be given.
Lady Pollock remarks that his irresistible eloquence c waked
the young from their visions and the old from their dreams, 3
and continues as follows :

When he lectured to children he was careful to be perfectly
distinct, and never allowed his ideas to outrun their intelligence

64 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

He took great delight in talking to them, and easily won their
confidence. The vivacity of his manner and of his countenance,
and his pleasant laugh, the frankness of his whole bearing, attracted
them to him. They felt as if he belonged to them ; and indeed
he sometimes, in his joyous enthusiasm, appeared like an inspired
child.

A writer in the British Quarterly Review states :

He had the art of making philosophy charming, and this was
due in no little measure to the fact that to grey-headed wisdom
he united wonderful juvenility of spirit. . . . Hilariously boyish
upon occasion he could be, and those who knew him best knew
he was never more at home, that he never seemed so pleased,
as when making an old boy of himself, as he was wont to say,
lecturing before a juvenile audience at Christmas.

No more appropriate method of concluding this chapter,
indeed, could be devised than by repeating a section from
one of the lectures in Faraday's most famous Children's
Series, * The Chemistry of a Candle.'

' There is another point about these candles. How does
the flame get hold of the fuel ? There is a beautiful answer
to that capillary attraction. cc Capillary attraction ! " you say
" the attraction of hairs ! " Well, never mind the name ;
it was given in old times before we had a good understanding
of what the real power was. Now I am going to give you
one or two instances of capillary attraction.

'I have here a substance which is rather porous a column
of salt and I will pour into the plate at the bottom, not
water as it appears, but a saturated solution of salt which
cannot absorb more ; so that the action which you see will
not be due to its dissolving anything. We may consider the
plate to be the candle, and the salt the wick, and this solution
the melted tallow. (I have coloured the fluid that you may
see the action better.) You observe that, now I pour in the
fluid, it rises and gradually creeps up the salt higher and
higher \ and provided the column does not tumble over,

MICHAEL FARADAY 65

it will go to the top. If this coloured solution were com
bustible, and we were to place a wick at the top of the salt,
it would burn as it entered into the wick. It is a most curious
thing to see this kind of action taking place, and to observe
how singular some of the circumstances are about it. When
you wash your hands you take a towel to wipe off the water,
and it is by that kind of wetting, or that kind of attraction
which makes the towel become wet with water, that the wick
is made wet with the tallow. I have known some careless
boys and girls (indeed, I have
known it happen to careful
people as well) who, having
washed their hands and wiped
them with a towel, have thrown
the towel over the side of the
basin, and before long it has
drawn all the water out of the
basin and conveyed it to the FlG - 5 Porosity of a column
floor, because it happened to be

thrown over the side in such a way as to serve the purpose
of a siphon.

e In like manner the particles of melted tallow ascend the
cotton and get to the top ; other particles then follow, and
as they reach the flame they are gradually burned.

' Here is another application of the same principle. You
see this bit of cane. I have seen boys about the streets, who
are very anxious to appear like men, take a piece of cane and
light it and smoke it, as an imitation of a cigar. They are
enabled to do so by the permeability of the cane in one
direction, and by its capillarity. If I place this piece of cane
on a plate containing some camphin (which is very much
like paraffin in its general character), exactly in the same
manner as the coloured fluid rose through the salt will this
fluid rise through the piece of cane. There being no pores
at the side, the fluid cannot go in that direction, but must
pass through its length. Already the fluid is at the top of
the cane : now I can light it and make it serve as a candle.

66 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

The fluid has risen by the capillary attraction of the piece
of cane, just as it does through the cotton in the candle.

c Now, let us look a little at the form of the candle flame.
There is a current formed, which draws the flame out, for
the flame which you see is really drawn out by the current,
and drawn upward to a great height.
You may see this by taking a lighted
candle, and putting it in the sun so
as to get its shadow thrown on a piece
of paper.

'Now I am going to imitate the sunlight,
by applying the voltaic battery to the
electric lamp. You now see our sun, and
its great luminosity; and by placing a
candle between it and the screen, we get
the shadow of the flame. You observe
the shadow of the candle, and of the
FIG. 6 Shadow of wick ; then there is a darkish part, and
a can e ame fa^ a ^ r ^ which is more distinct.
Curiously enough, however, what we see in the shadow as
the darkest part of the flame is, in reality, the brightest part ;
and here you see streaming upwards the ascending current
of hot air, which draws out the flame, supplies it with air,
and cools the sides of the cup of melted fuel.

' If I take a flame sufficiently large, it does not keep that
homogeneous, that uniform condition of shape, but it breaks
cpt with a power of life which is quite wonderful. I have
here a large ball of cotton, which will serve as a wick. And,
now that I have immersed it in spirit and applied a light to
it, in what way does it differ from an ordinary candle ?
Why, it differs very much in one respect, that we have a
vivacity about it, a beauty entirely different from the light
presented by a candle. You see those fine tongues of flame
rising up. You have the same general disposition of the mass
of flame from below upwards, but, in addition to that, you
have this remarkable breaking out into tongues which you
do not perceive in the case of a candle. Now, why is this ?

1VOCHAEL FARADAY 67

I must explain it to you, because when you understand that
perfectly, you will be able to follow me better in what I have
to say hereafter. I suppose some here will have made for
themselves the experiment I am going to show you. Am I
right in supposing that anybody here has played at snap
dragon ? I do not know a more beautiful illustration of the
philosophy of flame, as to a certain part of its history, than
the game of snapdragon. First, here is the dish ; and let
me say that when you play snapdragon properly you ought
to have the dish well warmed ; you ought also to have warm
plums and warm brandy, which, however, I have not got.

FIG. 7 Tongues of flame

When you have put the spirit into the dish, you have the cup
and the fuel ; and will not the raisins act like the wicks ?
I now throw the plums into the dish, and light the spirit,
and you see those beautiful tongues of flame that I refer to.
You have the air creeping in over the edge of the dish form
ing these tongues. Why ? Because through the force of the
current, and the irregularity of the action of the flame, it
cannot flow in one uniform stream. The air flows in so
irregularly that you have what would otherwise be a single
image, broken up into a variety of forms, and each of these
little tongues has an independent existence of its own.
Indeed, I might say, you have here a multitude of inde
pendent candles.

c It is too bad that we have not got further than my game

68 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

of snapdragon ; but we must not, under any circumstances,
keep you beyond your time. It will be a lesson to me in
future to hold you more strictly to the philosophy of the
thing than to take up your time so much with these illus
trations."

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Life and Letters of Faraday. H. Bence Jones, 1870

Michael Faraday ; his Life and Work. Silvanus P. Thompson, 1898

A Tribute to Michael Faraday. Rollo Appleyard, 1931

The Life of Sir Humphry Davy. John Ayrton Paris, 1831

British Scientists of the Nineteenth Century. J, G. Growther, 1935

Famous Chemists : the Men and their Work. Sir William Tilden,

1921
* Faraday's Contributions to Chemistry.' Newell, Journal of

Chemical Education, 1931

Faraday Centenary Exhibition Souvenir Catalogue. The Royal In
stitution, 1931

Michael Faraday* s Diary. Edited by T. Martin, 1936
Lectures on the Chemical History of a Candle. Michael Faraday, 1861

CHAPTER III
SOME YOUNG ORGANIC CHEMISTS

SHORTLY after he had given his last series ofjuvenile Lectures,
on 1 6 May 1861, to be precise, Faraday attended a meeting
of the Chemical Society at Burlington House, where a young
man of twenty-three had been invited to present an address
c On Colouring Matters derived from Coal Tar/ At the
conclusion of the meeting the master made that young man
supremely happy by congratulating him upon the excellence
of his discourse.

How did it happen that such a young man could already
have made such a mark in chemistry as to be invited to give
lectures and to evoke the eulogy of Faraday ? And why,
during the year of 1938, did chemical societies all over the
world hold special meetings to celebrate the centenary of
that young man's birth? The reason will appear in the
following pages.

William Henry Perkin, born in London on 12 March
1838, was the youngest son of a builder and contractor.
That he was a precocious lad, and answered OstwakTs
requirements for a youthful genius from the very start, is
evident from his own history of his early life :

As long as I can remember, the kind of pursuit I should
follow during my life was a subject that occupied my thoughts
very much. My father being a builder, the first idea was that
I should follow in his footsteps, and I used to watch the carpenters
at work, and also tried my hand at carpentering myself. Other
things I noticed led me to take an interest in mechanics and
engineering, and I used to pore over an old book called The
Artisan, which referred to these subjects and also described some
of the steam engines then in use, and I tried to make an engine
myself and got as far as making the patterns for casting, but I

(969) 69 6

yO GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

was unable to go any further for want of appliances. I had
always been fond of drawing, and sometimes copied plans for
my father, whose ambition was that I might be an architect
This led me on to painting, and made me think I should like to
be an artist, and I worked away at oil-painting for some time.
All these subjects I pursued earnestly and not as amusements,
and the information I obtained, though very elementary, was
of much value to me afterwards. But when I was between
twelve and thirteen years of age, a young friend showed me
some chemical experiments, and the wonderful power of sub
stances to crystallise in definite forms, and the latter especially
struck me very much, with the result that I saw there was in
chemistry something far beyond the other pursuits with which
I had previously been occupied. The possibility also of making
new discoveries impressed me very much. My choice was fixed,
and I determined if possible to become a chemist, and I immedi
ately commenced to accumulate bottles of chemicals and make
experiments.

At this time he entered the City of London School the
first school in which experimental science was taught and
came under the spell of c Tommy ' Hall, a born teacher :

Mr Hall very soon took an interest in me, and installed me
as one of his lecture assistants. Science, however, was not
allowed to interfere with the ordinary school curriculum, so that
the lectures, and the preparations for them, were delegated to
the interval for dinner, and being very much interested in pre
paring the experiments, I not infrequently found this interval
had passed before I had left off work ; but, fortunately, I never
found that the abstinence thus caused acted prejudicially upon
me.

Photography also was one of his favourite pursuits at
this period, as the portrait taken by himself facing page 73
will show.

Tommy Hall had been a student of Hofmann at the
Royal College of Chemistry ; Perkin determined to follow
in his footsteps. Through Hall's intercession, his father's
objections to this project were finally overcome, and Perkin
was allowed to start his course at the college at the callow age

SOME YOUNG ORGANIC CHEMISTS *JI

of fifteen. The first person he encountered in the laboratory-
was Hofmann's assistant, William Crookes, to whom we owe
the publication of Faraday's Lectures on the Chemical History
of a Candle he took them down in shorthand himself on the
occasion of their last delivery. This assistant later became
Sir William Crookes, a chemist as famous as his young pupil.

Hofmann's laboratory at that time, indeed, was the
centre of chemical research in Great Britain. For a long
time previously, British chemistry in general had been at
a shockingly low level ; the great German chemist Liebig
reported to Berzelius after a visit in 1837 : ' England is not
the home of science. The chemists are ashamed to call
themselves chemists, because the apothecaries, who are
despised, have appropriated the name.' Only the mighty
Faraday roused Liebig's admiration Faraday's memoirs
sounded to him like c admirably beautiful music * but
Faraday, as seen in the last chapter, could find no disciple.
The Prince Consort, a man of real vision regarding the
value of science, had determined to change all this. Battling
long against opposition and inertia, he was one of the prime
movers in establishing the Royal College of Chemistry in
1845 on the model of Liebig's laboratory at Giessen, and
it was he himself who engaged Hofmann, one of Liebig's
most distinguished students, to direct its destinies. After
the untimely death of the Prince Consort in 1861 one of
the greatest calamities that British science has ever sustained
interest in the college dwindled, and in 1864 Hofmann
returned to Germany.

Hofmann had a marvellous power of stimulating his
students in the line of original research. Perkin relates the
following story :

I well remember how one day, when the work was going
on very satisfactorily with most of us, and several new products
had been obtained, he came up and commenced examining a
product of the nitration of phenol one of the students had obtained
by steam distillation ; taking a little of the substance in a watch
glass, he treated it with caustic alkali, and at once obtained a

72 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

beautiful scarlet salt of what we now know to be orthonitrophenol.
Several of us were standing by at the time, and, looking up at
us in his characteristic and enthusiastic way, he at once exclaimed,
* Gentlemen, new bodies are floating in the air.'

Perkin's special abilities were soon recognised by his
professor ; by the time he was seventeen he had not only
tackled two research problems the first gave negative
results, the second went more successfully but he had been
promoted to an assistantship. His teaching duties, he dis
covered, left him little opportunity for continuing his research
work at the college ; he therefore fitted up part of a room
at home as a rough laboratory, and here he carried out
experiments in the evenings and during holidays.

The Easter vacation of 1856 approached, and this boy,
who had only just reached his eighteenth birthday, set him
self an ambitious task to perform therein the artificial
preparation of a naturally occurring alkaloid, of the highest
importance in medicine, quinine. His mode of attack was
based upon some remarks made by Hofmann in a report
published in 1849. In this report Hofmann referred to the
synthesis of quinine in the laboratory as a consummation
devoutly to be wished, and then stated :

It is a remarkable fact that naphthalene, the beautiful hydro
carbon of which immense quantities are annually produced in
the manufacture of coal gas, when subjected to a series of chemical
processes, may be converted into a crystalline alkaloid. This
substance, which has received the name of naphthalidine, contains
20 equivalents of carbon, 9 equivalents of hydrogen, and I
equivalent of nitrogen. 1

Now if we take 20 equivalents of carbon, 1 1 equivalents of
hydrogen, i equivalent of nitrogen, and 2 equivalents of oxygen,
as the composition of quinine, it will be obvious that naphtha
lidine, differing only by the elements of two equivalents of water,

1 This is under the old basis of atomic weights generally accepted at that
period : Carbon 6 ; Oxygen 8 This basis gave naphthalidine the chemical
formula of G 20 H,N, and quinine the chemical formula C 20 H ls NO a . (Actually,
the analysis of quinine on which Hofmann depended in the next paragraph
was faulty, the compound contains 12 equivalents of hydrogen instead of n.)

I

o

J J

*S s

"

Perkin at the age of fourteen

SOME YOUNG ORGANIC CHEMISTS 73

might pass Into the former alkaloid simply by an assumption
of water. We cannot, of course, expect to induce the water to
enter merely by placing it in contact, but a happy experiment
may attain this end by the discovery of an appropriate meta-
morphic process.

We know nowadays that Hofmann's reasoning was un
sound, and in the latter part of this chapter it will be shown
that the atomic composition of compounds of this complicated
type is a point of very minor significance ; what really
matters is the manner in which the atoms are built together,
and this can be varied in almost innumerable ways. Even
in the case of much simpler substances, identity of com
position does not necessitate identity of behaviour. Faraday,
for instance, had noted as long ago as 1825 tne * remarkable
circumstance 3 that a second new carburet of hydrogen
which he discovered in that year, now known as butylene,
possessed exactly the same composition as olefiant gas
(ethylene), and wisely remarked :

In reference to the existence of bodies composed of the same
elements and in the same proportions, but differing in their
qualities, it may be observed that now we are taught to look
for them, they will probably multiply upon us.

Chemical architecture, however, was in 1856 still a
totally undeveloped subject, and Perkin had to make serve
with the knowledge then at his command. He was led by
the popular * additive and subtractive ' method to the idea
that quinine might be formed from toluidine C 7 H 9 N x by
first adding C 3 H 4 to its composition by substituting the radi
cal allyl (QjH 5 ) for hydrogen, thus forming allyl-toluidine,
and then removing two hydrogen atoms and adding two
oxygen atoms by means of an oxidising agent thus :

N a 4 + H 2 O

allyl-toluidine quinine

1 Throughout this paragraph modern atomic weights are used, in order
to avoid confusion.

74 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

He succeeded in preparing allyl-toluidine by the action
of allyl iodide on toluidine, converted this into a salt and
treated it with potassium dichromate. Let him continue
the story now in his own words :

No quinine was formed, but only a dirty reddish-brown
precipitate. Unpromising though this result was, I was interested
in the action, and thought it desirable to treat a more simple
base in the same manner. Aniline was selected, and its sulphate
was treated with potassium dichromate ; in this instance a black
precipitate was obtained, and, on examination, this precipitate
was found to contain the colouring matter since so well known
as aniline purple or mauve.

So this lad of eighteen, seeking to synthesise quinine
(a feat, be it noted, which proved to be beyond the capacity
of any chemist for nearly a century thereafter, see page 95),
discovered the first aniline or e coal-tar ' x dye, and became
the father of the modern dyestuff industry. Perkin's dis
covery has frequently been described as a sheer accident,
because he did not anticipate in the slightest degree the
experimental result that rewarded his efforts. True, he had
the luck of a Davy, but he combined that luck with the
tenacity of a Faraday. Most chemists, on inspecting the
unholy mess that remained on the completion of the reaction
that he had performed, would have thrown it into the sink
without a moment's hesitation. Perkin acted differently :
he found that extraction of the black slime with boiling water
took part of it into solution, and that from this solution
crystals of a bright purple colour could be isolated. Very
soon after the isolation of this c colouring matter/ with the
inspired curiosity that distinguishes a great inventor, he tried
its action on silk and found that the silk was dyed a brilliant
mauve shade, which was c permanent ' (that is, it did not
fade) both on washing and on exposure to light.

He showed this to' his friend Church, { who, from his

1 The parent substance of all these dyes, aniline C 6 tLN, is obtained
commercially in large quantities from * black coal-tar. 5 It is a derivative
of Faraday's benzene G 6 H 6 .

SOME YOUNG ORGANIC CHEMISTS 75

artistic tastes, had a great interest in colouring matters, 3 and
Church encouraged him to continue. He sent samples of his
dyed silk to Messrs Pullar, of Perth, and in June he received
from them the following reply :

If your discovery does not make the goods too expensive,
it is decidedly one of the most valuable that has come out for
a very long time. This colour is one which has been very much
wanted in all classes of goods, and could not be obtained fast
on silks, and only at great expense on cotton yarns. I enclose
you pattern of the best lilac we have on cotton it is dyed only
by one house in the United Kingdom, but even this is not quite
fast, and does not stand the tests that yours does, and fades by
exposure to air. On silk the colour has always been fugitive :
it is done with cudbear or archil, and then blued to shade.

In August he took out a patent for his product, and
went to Perth to carry out experiments on cotton dyeing in the
factory there, with only partial success. Let him again take
up the thread of the narrative himself :

Although the results were not so encouraging as could be
wished, I was persuaded of the importance of the colouring
matter, and the result was that, in October, I sought an interview
with my old master, Hofinann, and told him of the discovery
of this dye, showing him patterns dyed with it, at the same time
saying that, as I was going to undertake its manufacture, I was
sorry that I should have to leave the Royal College of Chemistry.
At this he appeared much annoyed, and spoke in a very dis
couraging manner, making me feel that perhaps I might be
taking a false step which might ruin my future prospects.

Now comes the most surprising episode in the whole
adventure. This scapegrace of eighteen, who had dis
appointed his father by taking up chemistry and who had
antagonised his professor by proposing to desert pure chemical
research for a commercial gamble, persuaded his hard-headed
father to invest all his money in the erection of a factory for
the large-scale manufacture of aniline purple, and induced
his elder brother Thomas, who had a good knowledge of

76 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

building and was also a keen business man, to join forces
with him in the undertaking ! What sublime faith these
two showed in the baby of the family and, as Dr Levinstein
remarked in his Perkin Centenary Lecture, what courage
and self-confidence in his own ability Perkin himself possessed
in deciding to risk his scientific career, his brother's career,
and his father's life savings on this chance discovery !

In June 1857 the building of the works at Greenford
Green, near Harrow, was commenced. At that time neither
Perkin nor any of his staff had seen the inside of a chemical
factory, all they did was derived from books. To any un
prejudiced observer, the enterprise must have appeared
doomed from the outset.

The triumphant way in which the boy manufacturer
surmounted the manifold obstacles that successively con
fronted him in the matter of economic large-scale production
of aniline purple cannot be described here in detail, since
many- of the points involved are highly technical. What
can be told is how he managed to solve the problem of
applying his dye successfully to different kinds of material.

To dye silk seemed simple at first, but there arose the
difficulty of ensuring an even, level shade over the whole
length. Young Perkin soon discovered that this could be
done by dyeing from a soap bath c a method of dyeing '
(to quote Dr Levinstein again) c which had never been used
before, but has never gone out of practice since.'

On cotton goods, however, the dye alone could not be
made permanent ; as Perkin had already found at Perth,
it faded badly when washed. Perkin experimented per-
severingly until he discovered that a number of substances,
such as tannin, could be made to function as mordants in
other words, they assisted the dye to c bite into * the cloth.
This discovery has been called by industrial chemists a more
considerable achievement than the isolation of aniline
purple itself.

The demand for aniline purple in Great Britain was, at
first, only moderate ; this country has always been suspicious

SOMfc YOUNG ORGANIC CHEMISTS 77

of e synthetic products. 3 In France, however, the dye soon
became very popular under the name of mauve. The new
name stuck ; mauve is what Perkin's discovery is universally
called today. In 1862 Queen Victoria wore a dress dyed
with mauve she was then in half-mourning for the Prince
Consort when she attended that year's Great Exhibition
at the Crystal Palace, and the colour immediately became
the rage. According to Punch, a Frenchman visiting London
at that period is reported to have informed a friend that
even the policemen in the streets were telling people to
4 get a mauve on ' !

Meanwhile Perkin's factory was expanding, and he him
self was discovering and developing new dyes of the most
varied and beautiful shades. Other chemists rushed to
participate in the hunt. Even Hofmann and this must have
made his former pupil smile, although the smile was some
what concealed under the facial adornment which he had
acquired, as portrayed in the plate facing page 80 could
not resist the temptation ; he produced the most brilliant
colour of all, Hofmann's violet. He had still, however, not
completely forgiven Perkin for leaving his laboratory, as
will be seen from the following extract from one of his
addresses :

Whenever one of your chemical friends, full of enthusiasm,
exhibits and explains to you his newly discovered compound, you
will not cool his noble ardour by asking him that most terrible
of all questions, * What is its use ? Will your compound bleach
or dye ? Will it shave ? May it be used as a substitute for
leather ? * Let him quietly go on with his work. The dye, the
leather, will make their appearance in due time. Let him, I
repeat, perform his task. Let him indulge in the pursuit of
truth of truth pure and simple of truth not for the sake of
Mauve let him pursue truth for the sake of truth.

Perkin took these words to heart. After all, his greatest
delight was in original research 4 for the sake of truth,' and
when in 1873 he found that German competition in the
rapidly expanding dye industry had become so fierce that

78 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

he would need to enlarge his factory to two or three times
its already unwieldy size in order to survive, he decided to sell
out. At the age of thirty-five he had accumulated, through
his ability and industry, a fortune of 100,000 ; 4 big busi
ness * did not interest him any further. He retired to devote
the rest of his long life to pure research.

With Perkin's retiral German predominance in the
manufacture of synthetic dyestuflfs gradually increased, until
in the years immediately preceding World War I it had
become a virtual monopoly. Cheaper, and better, dyes
were constantly being produced, 1 and natural products were
almost completely displaced thereby. The ruin of indigo
cultivation in the East by the introduction of synthetic indigo
is only one of many instances. Since 1914, however, the
situation has changed materially for the better, a large
British dye industry has again been established, and some
of the most valuable discoveries in the whole field in recent
years have hailed from British laboratories. Caledon Jade
Green and Monastral Blue may be cited as particularly
important examples.

Perkin's later scientific work can be dealt with only
briefly here, though much of it was of primary significance.
He achieved the synthesis of coumarin, an odorous substance
contained in the tonka bean, the first case of the production
of a vegetable perfume from a coal-tar product. Coumarin
has the beautiful smell of new-mown hay, and so Perkin
helped to initiate our modern synthetic-perfume industry.
He devised a new general method for the formation of un-
saturated fatty acids, a reaction now known to every student
of organic chemistry as c Perkin's synthesis. 3 Has main field
of work, however, was the very abstruse subject of magnetic
rotation, and the following tribute was paid to him on the
occasion of the Perkin Jubilee Celebrations in 1906, held
to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the discovery of
mauve, by Professor Bruhl of Heidelberg :

1 Practically the last use of mauve itself, it may be noted, was on the
familiar * penny mauve * stamps of the last half of Queen Victoria's reign.

SOME YOUNG ORGANIC CHEMISTS 79

Availing yourself of the marvellous discovery of your great
countryman, Michael Faraday, you undertook to investigate the
relations between the chemical composition of bodies and their
magnetic circular polarisation that is to say, one of the general
properties of all matter. Before you began work there was little,
almost nothing, known of this subject, certainly nothing of prac
tical use to the chemist You created a new branch of science,
taught us how, from the magnetic rotation, conclusions can be
drawn as to the chemical structure of bodies, and showed that
the magnetic rotation allows us to draw comprehensive and
certain conclusions as to the chemical constitution of substances,
just as we may from another general physical property, viz.
refraction and dispersion. And by showing that both these
physical methods of investigations lead to completely harmonious
results, you did essential service to both the branches of study,
and also to chemistry, which they are destined to serve.

Perkin was a man of most retiring nature ; an enduring
example/ Professor Meldola has said, c of humility in the
face of success.' The same biographer continues :

No distinction which he ever gained throughout a career
which culminated in 1906, when the King conferred upon him
the honour of Knighthood, and when the nations of the world
assembled to render him homage, had the slightest influence
upon the modesty and gentleness of his disposition. It was his
personality that caused him to be revered in his domestic circle,
and to be beloved by all who enjoyed the privilege of his friend
ship.

His three sons all followed their father's profession, and
all three became distinguished chemists. He died ' in the
full tide of well-won honour ' on 14 July 1907.

In an early part of this chapter it was mentioned that,
at the time of the discovery of mauve, chemists had no
conception at all of the architecture of organic substances.
To get from one compound to another of a different com
position, the optimistic method was followed of trying to
knock off excess atoms of one element and to stick on deficient

80 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

atoms of another, trusting to luck that everything would
finally come out all right. It seldom did.

The reason is perfectly obvious to us now, of course.
One must not only take away and add the right numbers
of atoms, one must also have such an intimate knowledge
of the whole intricate structure of the ultimate particles, or
molecules, of the substances concerned as to ensure that these
atoms are taken away and added at exactly the right places,
and even then an extensive rearrangement of the whole
fabric is almost certain to prove to be necessary as well.
There are so many thousands of different ways in which
the constituent atoms of a complicated substance like quinine
can be fitted together ! And even if one considers simpler
cases, like Faraday's butylene and ethylene, where the two
substances have the same composition but different molecular
complexity, 1 one cannot say that one molecule of butylene
will be formed merely by forcing two molecules of ethylene
to combine. 2 One might as well imagine that, because a
house requires 20,000 bricks and a theatre 200,000, a theatre
could be erected simply by knocking ten adjoining houses
into one structure.

The helplessness of the organic chemist of 1856 becomes
still more apparent when it is noted that he had not then
definitely settled even upon the dimensions of bis bricks !
Utter confusion reigned regarding the three conceptions of
atoms, molecules and equivalents ; not until the famous
Italian, Cannizzaro, cleared up this chaos at the memorable
Karlsruhe Congress of 1860 was it possible to be certain
about the relative magnitudes of these fundamental chemical
units for different elements.

Before 1860, nevertheless, two young chemists had

already, simultaneously and independently, solved the

puzzle of the molecular structure of organic compounds.

Two simple general principles sufficed to pluck the heart

i

1 In modern nomenclature, butylene is C 4 H 8 and ethylene C 2 H 4 .
* An entirely different third substance, iso-butylene, might be obtained
instead !

Perkin at the age of twenty-two

Archibald Scott Couper

SOME YOUNG ORGANIC CHEMISTS 8 1

out of the mystery. In the first place, every carbon atom
has the power to link up directly with four other atoms ;
in chemical language, carbon has a valence of four. Secondly,
carbon atoms have the extraordinary ability rarely ex
hibited by atoms of any other element of linking them
selves together to form long chains.

These two principles were enunciated and developed by
Archibald Scott Couper and August Kekul6 in 1 858. Couper
never knew that he had won scientific immortality ; he went
to his grave in 1892 unwept, unhonoured and unknown.
Kekule became world-famous Baron von Stradonitz, pro
fessor of chemistry at the University of Bonn, tutor to the
future Kaiser Wilhelm II, feted by his colleagues * with a
magnificence unparalleled in the history of science.' What
a contrast between the two careers !

To failure, in this instance, just as much deference is
due as to success, and the tragedy of Gouper will therefore
be given priority in these pages. How his name was rescued
from obscurity after his death forms a fascinating detective
story, worthy of the best traditions of Sherlock Holmes or
Hercule Poirot. The tale may fittingly be called 'The
Couper Quest,' and a great part of the ensuing section will
be taken from an article under that title, published in 1934
by Dr Leonard Dobbin.

. In the year 1885 Richard Anschutz, who had succeeded
Kekule in the chair of chemistry at Bonn, carried out in
conjunction with one of his students an investigation on
the action of phosphorus pentachloride (one of the many
compounds discovered by Davy) on salicylic acid (the acid
radical of oil of wintergreen). This was a reaction on which
a considerable amount of work had already been done by
many noted chemists, including Kekule himself, but Anschutz
found that certain of the results that he obtained were in
conflict with those reported by his predecessors in the field.
On looking into the literature more carefully, however, he
ascertained that these same results had also been claimed

82 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

by e M. Couper ' in a communication to the Comptes Rendus
in Paris in 1858. Couper's experimental work had been
discredited by his contemporaries, but Anschtitz, on repeat
ing it, was able to confirm it completely and also to show
why all the others had failed where Couper had been success
ful. It was not, after all, a very important piece of research,
but Anschiitz emerged from it with a great respect for this
mysterious Monsieur Couper he naturally thought of him
as a Frenchman who had taken the right path where so
many mightier men had gone astray.

Nearly twenty years passed. The great Kekule was
dead, and Anschiitz was occupied in the compilation of a
comprehensive biography of his venerated teacher, a labour
of love that was to be undertaken so conscientiously that it
did not attain completion for another twenty years. Examin
ing the chemical journals of the period of Kekule's first great
discovery, he stumbled across the name of Couper once
more, and read for the first time an extended account of
Couper's researches on salicylic acid published in the
Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal. Previously, in 1885, he
had unfortunately contented himself with c a miserable
abstract in Liebigs Annalen? He was absolutely astonished
by the lucidity and daring of the views presented in this
article, and a reference therein to ' the rational theory
which I seek to develop in another paper ' led him to look
up further work of Couper, published both in Annales de
chimie et de physique and in the Philosophical Magazine for 1858.

What he found there literally flabbergasted him. Couper
had not only narrowly missed anticipating Kekule in announc
ing the fundamental ideas of the quadrivalency of carbon
and its capacity to enter into chemical union with itself, but
he was obviously thinking well in advance of Kekule.
Anschiitz gives this vivid account of his own reaction on
first reading Couper's presentation of his theory :

c Mein Gott/ I said to myself, c why did not Couper continue
his work : he was, at the time, decidedly freer than Kekul was

SOME YOUNG ORGANIC CHEMISTS 83

from preconceived ideas : with such penetration, what might
he not have been able to achieve : he must have died early,'

Animated by a desire to know something about the man
himself, and not finding any information concerning him
in the usual reference books of chemical history or biography,
Anschutz started in 1903 to make inquiries regarding
Couper, and it is here that e The Gouper Quest ' really
begins. The inquiries went in two main directions, firstly
to those of his friends who had connections with Great
Britain, since ' Archibald S. Couper, Esq./ as the name
was printed at the head of the paper in the Philosophical
Magazine, was evidently not a Frenchman, and secondly to
such of his colleagues as had been research students in Paris
in the remote days of 1858.

In August 1903 he received through his friend Debus,
a German who had formerly been professor of chemistry at
the Royal Naval College, Greenwich, a letter from one of
his London acquaintances, Greville Williams, for many
years chemist to the London Gas Company.

I grieve to say that I know nothing of the origin of poor
Couper. I first became acquainted with him when I was assistant
to Dr (afterwards Lord) Playfair in the University of Edinburgh,
where Couper was a student in the laboratory, but he soon left.
I only saw him once more, when he came up to me on the sea
shore at Dunoon on the Clyde, but he was then a complete wreck.
I believe his trouble originated in sunstroke. I deeply regret
being unable to give you more information about this great but
unfortunate genius.

Here the matter apparently rested for some time, but
in February 1906 Debus wrote to Alexander Crum Brown,
professor of chemistry at the University of Edinburgh, as
follows :

My friend Professor Anschutz of Bonn wishes to obtain infor
mation about the parentage and education of the late Archibald S.
Couper. We have asked several friends, but no-one seems to

84 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

know anything about him. It has occurred to us that perhaps
the Register of the University of Edinburgh, where Gouper
studied Chemistry about the year 1860, may contain the name
of his native place, or perhaps other particulars, which might
be useful in tracing his history.

In response to this request, Crum Brown looked up the
available registers at Edinburgh University, but did not
find there any record as to Couper's birthplace or any other
particulars concerning him. Debus, acknowledging a com
munication to this effect, remarked :

We do wish to know something about his origin and life as
one of the founders of structural chemistry. He must have been
a man of genius. For any further information we will be
thankful.

Further information was soon to appear, for Crum
Brown, now actively interested in the quest himself, was
writing around to all his own friends asking about Couper.
Only one reply proved to be of any help ; it was from
Sir James Dewar of the Royal Institution, who had also
in his youth been an assistant to Playfair at Edinburgh
University. Dewar said :

Gouper was long before my time. It is like a dream to me
as if I had been told that he had to be put into an asylum. I do
not doubt that he was with Playfair in some capacity, but I can't
tell you what.

Dewar's letter supplied the first real clue to Couper's
identity. Following up the vague reference to an asylum,
Crum Brown addressed a letter of inquiry to the Secretary
of the Board of Lunacy for Scotland, and received an answer
in May 1906 to the effect that Archibald Scott Couper was
admitted to a mental institution under the Board, as a private
patient, on 15 May, and discharged on 14 July 1859 ; that
shortly afterwards he was again admitted to a similar institu
tion ; and that he was finally discharged in November 1862,

SOME YOUNG ORGANIC CHEMISTS 85

when he was sent to the care of his mother in Kirkintilloch.
The reply also furnished the name and occupation of his
father and the address of the latter as Townhead, Kirkin
tilloch, Dumbartonshire.

Having established by correspondence that Couper's
father had been the proprietor of a large cotton-weaving
mill at Kirkintilloch, and that Couper himself, after his
discharge from the asylum, had lived at his mother's home
in that town for many years * a familiar figure walking
about with an attendant * Grum Brown visited Kirkin
tilloch in June. Couper himself, of course, was long since
dead, but drum Brown was introduced to a number of his
relatives, and from them learned a little of his general
history. Details of his scientific career, however, were lack
ing, and these were what Grum Brown most eagerly desired
to obtain.

Dr Dollar, a cousin of Couper and a veterinary surgeon
in London, sent him a bundle of papers, among which was
a letter to Couper from Amsberg, Westphalia, signed
e Berring. 5 This letter was in such very friendly and familiar
terms that Cram Brown felt sure that if Berring was still
alive he was the man to tell him all he wished to know
about Couper' s studies abroad. The writer told of his own
impending marriage, and mentioned his sister Minna ; but
how to find Berring !

Now it so happened that just a month later Cram Brown
had a visitor staying at his house for two days, Rikka Kaul,
a very distant family connection. 1 Rikka was the daughter
of a major in the German Army, stationed then in West
phalia. For weeks Cram Brown had been puzzling himself
as to how he could hear anything of Berring ; listen now
how he did hear something !

At breakfast on July loth it occurred to me that Rikka had
been for some years living in Westphalia, and I said to her :

1 Crum Brown explains the relationship in typically Scots fashion thus :
c Her mother is the daughter of our old friend Peter Wilson, my brother-in-
law James Stewart Wilson's brother.*

(969) 1

86 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

' Rikka, is Berring a common name in Westphalia ? ' She started
and said : I don't know if it is common, but we know a Mr
Berring.' A.G.B. : e Arnsberg ? ' RIKKA : ( He was in Arnsberg
but he lives in Coblenz now. 5 A.C.B. : Is he married ? '
RIKKA : Yes, but his wife is dead ; he has a daughter. 5 A.G.B. :
e Has he a sister Minna ? 5 RIKKA, in great astonishment : * How
do you know Mr Berring ? 5 A.G.B. : c I know nothing about
him, but wish to find out. 3 I then told her all about it and she
gave me the Geheimrath's address. I wrote to him and got
a very friendly answer.

Fact is, indeed, stranger than fiction ! After a lapse
of nearly fifty years, Couper's old comrade was thus brought
to light, and with his aid the story of Couper's student years
on the Continent was readily reconstructed. Here is a con
densation of a letter which he wrote to Crum Brown on
28 July :

I became acquainted with Mr Archibald Scott Gouper
when I studied in Berlin in the Summer Session, 1852, and was
in daily association with him during the four months May /August.

Gouper was a very handsome man of tall slender build and
of distinguished aristocratic appearance. His fine face, with its
glowing colour, was animated in the most engaging manner by
the well-nigh marvellous sparkle of his deep-black eyes. 1 He
was not, however, in robust health and always had to be con
cerned about guarding it. He went back to Scotland in August
1852, but in the following summer (1853) again made a journey
to Germany and was with me for a few weeks' visit in a small
Westphalian town not far from the Porta Westphalica on the Weser.

In autumn of the following year (1854) I again met with
Couper in Berlin, and I lived with him in a small private hotel
(Dorotheenstrasse, 75) until his departure for Paris in spring,
1856. He had meantime resolved on the study of chemistry.
Gouper afterwards wrote to me from Paris that he had made
a discovery which Professor Kekule in Heidelberg also claimed
for himself, although wrongly, since priority undoubtedly be
longed to him (Gouper). So far as I recollect, I have heard
nothing more of him since.

1 The portrait of Gouper facing p, 81 was taken in Paris in 1857 or 1858.

SOME YOUNG ORGANIC CHEMISTS 87

So ends Crum Brown's contribution to the Couper
Quest ; meantime, additional evidence with regard to the
really vital incident in Gouper's career the discovery that
he made while in Paris was beginning to come in from other
quarters. In March 1906 Adolph Lieben, of Vienna, wrote
to Anschiitz :

Gouper's work is wholly independent of Kekule's, as no one
knows better than I. Couper who, like myself, worked at that
time in Wurtz's laboratory, was in the habit of discussing his
intentions and ideas with me, and he also handed to me for
examination, prior to its publication, his paper which appeared
later in the Comptes Rendus for 1858 ; then he handed it on to
Wurtz. Meanwhile there appeared the part of the Annalen
published at the end of May, with Kekule's similar work, and
Couper was profoundly disturbed by this coincidence.

And in May of the same year Albert Ladenburg wrote
from Breslau :

Gouper worked with Wurtz in Paris and asked him to pass
on to the Academy his paper on the quadrivalence of carbon.
Wurtz, who at the time was not a member of the Academy,
was obliged to give the paper to some one else who was a member
(usually Balard). He bungled this a little, and so Kekul6*s
communication appeared before Couper's was laid before the
Academy. On account of this, great wrath of Couper, who
took Wurtz to task and became insolent. This displeased Wurtz
and he expelled him from the laboratory. Couper seems to
have taken this very much to heart, and it was believed in Paris
that the beginning of his illness dated from this episode. The
story itself is authentic : I have it from Wurtz.

What a pathetic picture these two letters reveal ! The
young student (he was only twenty-seven) handed in his
masterpiece to his professor to be presented to the French
Academy for publication, but Wurtz seems to have hesitated
to act as sponsor for ideas so daring and far-reaching that
he regarded them as fantastic, and he took no immediate
action. No doubt his conservative mind considered he was
acting in Gouper's best interests in holding back such c revolu-

88 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

tionary extravagances/ but the delay was fatal. Kekule's
classical paper appeared, outlining a theory virtually identical
with that of Couper, and was at once acclaimed and
applauded by the scientific world ; Gouper was forestalled
through no fault of his own. An abstract of his article was
at once presented to the Academy under the distinguished
patronage of Faraday's old friend, Dumas, but it was too
late. His quarrel with his professor and his expulsion from
the laboratory made matters tenfold worse. He felt that
the whole world was against him, he lifted no finger to share
the honours with his more fortunate rival, he made no reply
to the many critics of his theories and practical work, as
a scientific man he vanished and his work was forgotten
until, more than forty years later, it fortuitously attracted
the attention of Anschiitz.

For a short time, after his return to Scotland, he did
hold a position in the University of Edinburgh as laboratory-
assistant to Sir Lyon Playfair, but ill health dogged his
footsteps and forced him to resign. Fate continued to pile
one misfortune upon another he lost his father, and finally
an attack of sunstroke prostrated him and left him enfeebled
for the rest of his life. Tended for more than thirty years
by the loving care of a wonderful mother, he passed away
on ii March 1892, at the age of sixty-one.

Long afterwards, in 1931, a meeting attended by many
distinguished chemists was held at Kirkintilloch to celebrate
the centenary of Couper's birth, and a plaque was placed
above the doorway of the house in which he was born to
commemorate his tragic genius. Many of the worthy citizens
of the little burgh must have heard with amazement how
the man they had looked upon in their childhood days as
the c town loonie * was a man whom scientists all over the
globe now delighted to honour. A gathering of several
hundred people in the Town Hall listened to an eloquent
address * on Couper delivered by Sir James Irvine, Principal

1 The two preceding paragraphs^ it may be mentioned, are borrowed
almost verbatim from this address.

SOME YOUNG ORGANIC CHEMISTS 89

of the University of St Andrews. Some of the final touch
ing sentences of this panegyric follow :

What did Couper think of in his placid fragile retirement ?
Did he reflect on the fact that in every university in the world
his theory was being taught to generation after generation of
students to whom his name was unknown? Did he follow the
immense technical development of organic chemistry which has
given us our most brilliant colours and dyestuffs, our most
powerful explosives, our antiseptics and synthetic drugs ? Did
the smoky cloud hanging over distant Glasgow bring to mind
the busy factories engaged in the building up and breaking down
of organic molecules in processes controlled by the theory he
had thought out years before in a student's lodging in Paris ?
Did he think of the Fellowship of the Royal Society, of medals
or degrees, the honours which fell to men more fortunate but
less worthy ? I am sure he had no such thoughts ; for to him
chemistry was a philosophy the end of which was theory, and
he had no concern with the busy world of industry. But at
times he must have thought of Kekule and of Wurtz ; if so, he
kept his thoughts to himself.

Before leaving Couper for Kekule, let us linger a moment
to pay a tribute to the memory of Grum Brown and of
Anschiitz, who toiled so nobly to secure for Gouper, after
death, the recognition denied him during life. Of Anschutz
in particular Sir James Irvine remarks :

No finer example of the brotherhood of science could be
found than the efforts made by Anschutz, then at the height of
his fame, to do justice to an obscure stranger to whom he owed
nothing, not even national sympathy.

Such kindness, however, was typical of Anschutz. After
World War I many of the British and American soldiers
in the army of occupation of the Rhineland took the oppor
tunity of attending classes at Bonn University. In general,
they were received coldly, but Anschutz went out of his
way to give them the warmest of welcomes, both in his
laboratory and in his home. When his colleagues remon-

go GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

strated with him, he is reported to have said : ' There may
be another Couper among them ; who knows ? ' Like
drum Brown, he lived to a ripe old age, happy in his last
year in the fact that the land of Couper had shown its
gratitude by electing him an Honorary Fellow of the Royal
Society of Edinburgh.

To him, indeed, science was not national, but inter
national. Heil Anschtitz !

Friedrich August Kekule he always called himself
August was born at Darmstadt, in Hesse, on 7 September
1829. His father, a government official, wished, like Perkin's
father, to make his boy an architect, and in 1847 he entered
the University of Giessen to study for that profession. There
he attended the lectures of Liebig on chemistry, and such
was their fascination that another architect was lost. In
later life, however, he always insisted that his early work
in architecture was of extreme value to him, it gave him the
habit of making an actual picture of any problem with which
he was occupied. As Professor Japp states in his Memorial
Lecture to the Chemical Society :

He was doubtless right. After all, he remained an architect
to the last : only it was the architecture of molecules, instead
of that of buildings, with which it was his lot to concern himself.

Having persuaded his family to consent to his change
of plans, he returned to Liebig' s laboratory the following
year to study chemistry seriously. How seriously he worked
is shown by his own confession at a celebration which the
German Chemical Society held in his honour in 1890 :

I have faithfully followed the counsel which my old master,
Liebig, gave me when I was a young beginner. * If you want
to be a chemist, 5 Liebig said to me when I was working in his
laboratory, * you will have to ruin your health ; no-one who
does not ruin his health with study will ever do anything in
chemistry nowadays. 5 That was forty years ago. Is it still true ?
I faithfully followed the advice. During many years I managed

SOME YOUNG ORGANIC CHEMISTS 9 1

to do with four and even three hours' sleep. A single night
spent over my books did not count ; it was only when two or
three came in succession, that I thought I had done anything
meritorious.

Such industry deserved a reward, and in 1850 Liebig
offered him an assistantship. This tempting appointment
he declined : he wanted to widen his outlook by studying
abroad. That he was wise in his decision is certain. As
Japp says, had he been hampered by a one-sided training
he might not have discovered his strength until the brief
period the too brief period during which the great
creative geniuses of science really create was past. He
worked in Paris with Dumas for a year, and there met
Wurtz, Gerhardt and many other famous chemists. Later,
in 1854, after he had graduated at Giessen as Doctor of
Philosophy, he obtained an assistantship with Stenhouse in
London, and it was here that he obtained the first vision
of his future discovery. Let the story be told in his own
words :

During my stay in London I resided for a considerable time
in Clapham Road in the neighbourhood of the Common. I
frequently, however, spent my evenings with my friend Hugo
Mtiller at Islington, at the opposite end of the giant town. We
talked of many things, but oftenest of our beloved chemistry.
One fine summer evening I was returning by the last omnibus,
c outside,' as usual, through the deserted streets of the metropolis,
which are at other times so full of life. I fell into a reverie and
lo, the atoms were gambolling before my eyes I Whenever,
hitherto, these diminutive beings had appeared to me, they had
always been in motion ; but up to that time I had never been
able to discern the nature of their motion. Now, however, I
saw how, frequently, two smaller atoms united to form a pair ;
how a larger one embraced two smaller ones ; how still larger
ones kept hold of three or even four of the smaller ; whilst the
whole kept whirling in a giddy dance. I saw how the larger
ones formed a chain, dragging the smaller ones after them, but
only at the ends of the chain. The cry of the conductor : ' Clap-
ham Road/ awakened me from my dreaming : but I spent a

92 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

part of the night in putting on paper at least sketches of these
dream forms. This was the origin of the Theory of Molecular
Structure.

After he had obtained a junior teaching position at
Heidelberg in 1856 Kekule continued to work on these
ideas, and in May 1858 he published his memorable paper
in the Annalen, where the two principles of the quadrivalence

FIG. 8 Kekul6 formulae

of carbon and the linkage of carbon atoms are clearly
enunciated. Pictures of the structure of six typical organic
compounds ethyl chloride, ethyl alcohol, acetic acid,
acetamide, methyl formate and methyl cyanide as drawn
by Kekule at this period are shown above. 1

These pictures are certainly crude, in the light of present-
day knowledge, and even some of his German colleagues
ridiculed them under the name of c roll and sausage formulae. 3
The system used is cumbrous, and Kekule himself employed
it only sparingly. For the representation of molecules con
taining branched chains, it becomes quite impracticable.

Compare these pictures with those given by Couper in
his 1858 paper, and the superiority of the Scot is immediately
evident. The diagram on page 93 records Couper's con-

1 The strokes through the carbon and oxygen atoms in these pictures are
intended by Kekul6 to indicate that he had adopted, as the atomic weights
of these elements, the values 12 and 16 respectively (see p. 72).

SOME YOUNG ORGANIC CHEMISTS

93

struction for a number of organic compounds propyl
alcohol, butyl alcohol and butyl-ethyl ether in the first
column ; acetic acid, propionic acid and glycol in the
second ; oxalic acid and tartaric acid in the third. These
formulae are essentially the same as those used by organic
chemists today. 1

f O OH

c l

I IH

C H 2
C H 3

f O OH

C

I IH

C H 2
C H a

G H 3

00}
C [C

H'J

P H a C

OH

I

C
G H 2
C H a

f

C l
I 10'

C H 3

f O OH

C 1
I 10*

f~% TTg

\^t n

C H 3

f O OH

f H*

G !
( O OH

FIG. 9 Couper formulae

(

"

O OH

(.O OH

Truly, as has often been said, the line of development
of modern 6 graphic ' formulae is through Couper, not
through Kekule. To Kekule, however, went all the glory.
The young Heidelberg Prwatdocent was at once called upon
to fill the chair of chemistry at the University of Ghent,
and it was there a few years later that he made his crowning

1 The only important difference is that Couper, although he had seen
the necessity of using the value 12 for the atomic weight of carbon, continued
to employ the old figure 8 for oxygen. Consequently, as will be noted by an
inspection of the diagram, oxygen atoms always occur in his formulae in
pairs, where only a single atom is really required.

94 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

achievement, the discovery of the structure of benzene. If
Kekuie must concede to Couper and this is admitted even
by Anschiitz a keener insight into the architecture of one*
half of the organic field, aliphatic or chain compounds,
nobody can deny him the sole credit for elucidating the
more intricate fabric of the second half, aromatic or ring
compounds. His memoir on the benzene theory has been
called the most brilliant piece of scientific prediction to be
found in the whole range of organic chemistry. Once more,
let us allow Kekuie himself to relate how the first inspiration
arrived :

I was sitting writing at my text-book ; but the work did not
progress ; my thoughts were elsewhere. I turned my chair to
the fire and dozed. Again the atoms were gambolling before
my eyes. This time the smaller groups kept modestly in the
background. My mental eye, rendered more acute by repeated
visions of the kind, could now distinguish larger structures, of
manifold conformation : long rows, sometimes more closely fitted
together ; all twining and twisting in snake-like motion. But
look ! What was that ? One of the snakes had seized hold of its
own tail, and the form whirled mockingly before my eyes. As
if by a flash of lightning I awoke ; and this time aiso I spent
the rest of the night in working out the consequences of the
hypothesis.

So originated what was ultimately developed into the
famous ' hexagon ' formula for benzene Faraday's ' bi-
carburet of hydrogen ' which constitutes the basis of all
' aromatic * architecture. The six carbon atoms in the
molecule C 6 H 6 form a closed ring, and each is combined
with one hydrogen atom. A comic representation of this,
the e monkey formula 3 for benzene, which demonstrates
that even German chemists can have their lighter moments,
is shown on page 95. For perfect accuracy, each monkey
should also be holding a banana (to represent the hydrogen
atom) in its free 'hand, 3 but for simplicity the hydrogen
atoms in the benzene ring are frequently omitted in com-

SOME YOUNG ORGANIC CHEMISTS 95

plex graphic formulae the mere outline of a hexagon
indicates the fundamental nucleus.

Examples of this will be seen in the structural formulae
for quinine and for mauve * shown on page 96. How different
the architectural styles of the two molecules are, yet how

FIG 10 The * monkey formula * for benzene

prominent the hexagon pattern of Kekule is in each structure!
A glance at these two formulae will make it obvious even
to the layman how far from the mark Perkin's e shot in the
dark 3 landed. The formula for Monastral Blue, shown on

1 Actually the sulphate of Perkin's base c mauveine * is represented here.
As regards quinine, its structure was first deduced by employing standard
reactions to split the complex molecule of the naturally-occurring alkaloid
into smaller fragments, which were then identified as relatively simple sub
stances with constitutions already determined. The accuracy of the deduction
was completely established only in 1 944, when two American chemists finally
succeeded in reversing the process, rebuilding the complex molecule from
such fragments and proving that their synthetic product was identical with
natural quinine.

96 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

page 97, is still more complicated, but beautiful in its
symmetry.

The modern organic chemist is such a skilled architect
nowadays that he can construct practically any molecule
he may desire to correspond exactly to his special require
ments. In the field of dyestuffs, for instance, he knows that
certain groups, called ckromopkores y must be present to make
colour possible, and that certain other groups, called auxo-
chromes, are also necessary to strengthen that colour and
make it permanent. By varying the nature of these
groups, and by shifting their relative positions in the
molecule, the most delicate differences in shade can be
effected.

CH=CH 2

(I) (II)

FIG. 1 1 Graphic formulae of (I) Quinine and (II) Mauve

A single illustration will suffice. The most precious of
all dyes in ancient times was Tyrian purple, obtained from
certain species of sea-snails (Murex). It was so costly that
it was reserved for the use of emperors. The secret of pre
paring this substance was lost for centuries, but in 1909 the
German chemist Friedlander gathered 12,000 of these
molluscs and succeeded in isolating 1.5 grams of the colour
ing material for analysis. He showed it to be a derivative
of indigo, containing two bromine atoms in place of two
of the hydrogens. This identical substance had been pre
pared synthetically five years earlier, but found to be inferior

SOME YOUNG ORGANIC CHEMISTS 97

to another dye containing the bromine atoms in different
positions in the molecule.

The colour that flashed only on the robes of those c born
in the purple ' in olden days is, therefore, not considered
good enough for the ordinary flapper of the twentieth
century ! And yet there are still people who regard synthetic
chemical products as fundamentally inferior to natural !

FIG. 1 6 Graphic formula of Monastral Blue

Let us return to Kekule, the master-architect. After nine
years in Belgium, he was appointed in 1867 to be professor
of chemistry at the University of Bonn. Never, in later
life, could he recapture the first fine careless rapture of his
early achievements, but he not only performed much useful
research himself, he trained many students who afterwards
became famous chemists. Japp says of him in this con
nection :

His laboratory teaching was remarkable for the way in which
he endeavoured to awaken independent thought in the student.
He was never better pleased than when a student was full of
suggestions, which he would spend much time in patiently listen
ing to and criticising. The one thing which he never pardoned
in a student was want of interest in his work ; such a student
was, for the future, quietly ignored.

His lectures were an inspiration to all who heard them ;
they appealed not only to the intellect but to the imagination.

o8 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

*y

Chemistry to him was always an adventure, not a livelihood.
It was with his own experiences vividly in view that he once
remarked :

Let us learn to dream, gentlemen, then perhaps we shall
find the truth. But let us beware of publishing our dreams
before they have been put to the proof by the waking under
standing.

His last scientific paper was published in 1890 ; he died
on 13 July 1896.

Neither Perkin nor Kekule ever was an architect, in the
narrow sense of the word, but both builded better than their
fathers knew. As for Couper, of him it may justly be said :
' The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become
the head of the corner. 3

BIBLIOGRAPHY

c Sir William Perkin's Adventure and what has come of it,'
H. Levinstein, Chemistry and Industry, 1938

Eminent Chemists of our Time. B. Harrow, 1920

Memorial Lectures delivered before the Chemical Society : The
Hofmann Memorial Lecture. 5 W. H. Perkin, 1893 ; * The
Kekule Memorial Lecture. 5 F. R. Japp, 1897

'Obituary Notice: William Henry Perkin. 3 R. Meldola,
Journal of the Chemical Society, 1908

* Life and Chemical Work of Archibald Scott Couper. 5

R. Anschiitz, Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 1909

* The Couper Quest/ L. Dobbin, Journal of Chemical Education,

1934

c Couper Centenary Meeting/ Chemistry and Industry, 1931
August KekuU. R. Anschutz, 1929

CHAPTER IV
THE FRENCH FARADAY AND THE DUTCH DAVY

THE preceding chapter has described how the architecture
of organic molecules has been minutely examined to the
point where it is possible to represent the structure of the
most complex compounds by means of c graphic formulae. 5
The story, however, is not yet complete. Such graphic
formulae are, like the pages on which they are printed,
only two-dimensional, whereas the molecules themselves
exist in three dimensions. In other words, the substances
with which the chemist works, like the building in which
he is working, occupy space ; they are not restricted to mere
surfaces. The plan of a house may be very useful and
informative, but it cannot give us a perfect picture of the
house itself. The same is true of molecules : the space
relationships of their constituent atoms are of primary
importance.

Indications that space problems must be taken into
account in the study of chemical properties were not lack
ing, in fact, long before Couper and Kekule began their
investigations. In this connection, the most outstanding
discovery was that made by a brilliant young French chemist,
Louis Pasteur.

Louis Pasteur may very properly be styled * the French
Faraday ' ; there is, indeed, an extraordinary similarity
between the two men and their careers. The same humble
origin, the same family devotion, the same simplicity, the
same unselfish slavery to science and scorn of wealth, the
same switching away from chemistry to adjoining fields in
later life. And, sad to relate, also the same unmerited
misfortunes antagonism from their contemporaries and
shattered health in their prime.

IOO GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

The father of Louis was a hard-working tanner who had
fought in the Grand Army of the Republic with such dis
tinction that he had been decorated with the Legion of
Honour by Napoleon. On the little house that he occupied
in a poor quarter of Dole, a small town in the Department
of Jura, there now stands a simple inscription in gold :
c Here Louis Pasteur was born on 27 December 1822.' That
Louis appreciated, all through his life, the sacrifices his
parents made to secure him a good education is witnessed
by the fact that the most celebrated of his works bears the
dedication : To the memory of my father, old soldier under
the First Empire, Chevalier of the Legion of Honour 9 a
tribute, as Frankland has said in his Pasteur Memorial
Lecture, more imperishable and more covetable than the
ribbon pinned to his tunic by the victor of Marengo and
Austerlitz.

At the local school at Arbois Louis was conscientious
but slow, and distinguished only in drawing. His first
original effort a pastel depicting his mother going to
market in her cap and shawl still exists, and shows bold
realism. His headmaster, M. Romanet, however, distin
guished the hidden spark of genius in the boy, and when
he was fifteen persuaded his parents to send him to Paris,
to prepare for entrance into the great cole Normale. The
experiment was a failure ; the poor lad was so homesick
that he fell seriously ill. ' If I could only get a whiff of the
tannery yard/ he would say, e I feel I should be cured. 5
Before a month had passed his father had to come and take
him back to Arbois.

The following year he spread his wings once more, but
only as far as the neighbouring college at Besangon, and
for a time it seemed that the post of a provincial teacher
would represent the height of his aspirations. c If you could
only become, some day, the master at Arbois,' his father
often said, * I should be the happiest man in the world ! *
But ambition reawakened and, after he had completed his
courses at Besamjon and taught there for two years, he

THE FRENCH FARADAY AND THE DUTCH DAVY 101

went to Paris for the second time in October 1842. He had
determined to become a chemist, although his instruction
in chemistry so far had been very inadequate and his record
therein on his final certificate is inscribed merely c mediocre.'
He attended the lectures of Dumas at the Sorbonne and
was entranced. He might have started work at the cole
Normals immediately, but he was dissatisfied at the low place
he had taken in the entrance examination thereto, and
preferred to wait for another year. Combining teaching with
study at the same boarding school which he had left so
suddenly on his previous visit, he kept his parents free from
all expense, and in 1843 he entered the &ole Normale at last
fourth on the list.

He worked assiduously, but was not too busy to under
take a most unusual task in addition. His father had often
deplored his own lack of education, and with the pretext
of helping his young sister Josephine in her studies the
budding chemist now tutored the old man also by corres
pondence ! Papa Pasteur would often sit up late at night
over rules of grammar and mathematical problems, prepar
ing answers to send to Louis in Paris.

In 1846 he sat and passed a competitive examination
which made him eligible to becbme a professor in a junior
college, but when the Ministry of Public Instruction pro
posed to send him to teach physics in remote Tournon, his
immediate chief Balard, the discoverer of bromine, inter
vened. Louis had just begun independent research in
Balard's laboratory, and it would be rank folly, Balard
declared, to tear him away before he had obtained his
doctor's degree. It would, indeed, as events soon proved.

There was at that time a rising young professor from
Bordeaux working as a visitor in Balard's laboratory, Auguste
Laurent, e a strange delicate-looking man, a scientist and
a poet,* a genius with only a few more years to live. He
also must have sensed the genius latent in Pasteur, for he
delighted the shy youth by suggesting that he should assist
him in some of his experiments. Their work in common

(969) B

IO2 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

was soon interrupted, for Laurent was appointed assistant
to Dumas at the Sorbonne, but Louis has left a manuscript
note relating its consequences :

One day it happened that M. Laurent studying, if I mistake
not, some tungstate of soda, perfectly crystallised and prepared
from the directions of another chemist, whose results he was
verifying showed me through the microscope that this salt,
apparently very pure, was evidently a mixture of three distinct
kinds of crystals, easily recognisable with a little experience of
crystalline forms. The lessons of our modest and excellent pro
fessor of mineralogy, M. Delafosse, had long since made me love
crystallography ; so, in order to acquire the habit of using the
goniometer, I began to study carefully the formations of a very
fine series of combinations, all very easily crystallised, tartaric
acid and the tartrates.

It was through ' tartaric acid and the tartrates ' that he
was first to become famous.

Tartaric acid had been discovered in 1770 by the wonder
ful young Swedish chemist, Carl Wilhelm Scheele, in the
crystalline deposit, or c tartar/ which separates in wine-vats
during the process of fermentation. Fifty years later an
Alsatian manufacturer, Kestner, preparing tartaric acid in
his factory at Thann, obtained by chance a very singular
substance. Chemically it behaved exactly like tartaric acid,
but certain of its physical properties solubility in water and
crystalline form, for example were quite distinctive.
Kestner could never get it again, however often he tried,
but he kept some of it in stock and sent some to distinguished
chemists for them to study. Gay-Lussac called it racemic
add, Berzelius called it para-tartaric acid, but neither solved
its mystery.

Just after Pasteur had commenced his studies at the
cole Normals, a striking new difference between sodium-
ammonium tartrate * and sodium-ammonium racemate had

1 The salt obtained by neutralising tartaric acid half with caustic soda
and half with ammonia.

"THE FRENCH F ARAB AY AND THE DUTCH DAVY IOJ

been noted by the German mineralogist, Mitscherlich. In
the crystalline state the salts seemed to Mitscherlich to be
absolutely identical, but when they were dissolved in water
the solution of the tartrate was found to rotate the plane
of polarised light to the right, while the solution of the
racemate was inactive.

At this point a digression will be necessary in order to
explain the term c polarised light,' which naturally means
nothing to the non-chemist without an explanation. Accord
ing to the wave theory, light consists of vibrations or waves.
The wave-length^ or distance between the crests of successive
waves, varies with the colour of the light, but is in all cases
very small, not much more than one hundred-thousandth

FIG. 13 Double refraction (calcite)

of an inch. Now in ordinary light, as it comes to us from
a lantern, these waves are undulating in all directions per
pendicular to the ray. It is found, however, that certain
crystals Iceland spar, or calcite, is a good example have
the power of splitting a beam of ordinary light into two
distinct beams. This phenomenon, known as e double
refraction/ is illustrated in the diagram shown above.

Now when these two beams are examined separately
and this can readily be done by means of a Nicol prism x
a very interesting fact emerges. The undulations of the
light are no longer haphazard : in one beam they are all
in one direction and in the other beam all in another. The
second beam, in fact> is vibrating in a plane exactly at right

1 This, devised by the Scots chemist Nicol in 1828, consists of a rhomb
of Iceland spar with perfect cleavage cut diagonally in two pieces, the two
halves being joined together again with O*narfg balsam. One of the two
beams of light, on reaching the junction, is deflected away to the side j the
other passes straight through.

104 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

angles to the first. Each beam is said to be polarised. It is
found, furthermore, that if a second Nicol prism is placed
in the path of a polarised beam in a position perpendicular
to the original prism, no light can pass through it at all !
This is the principle of that useful instrument, the
polarimeter.

Perhaps the explanation is still proceeding too rapidly,
however, for the lay reader, and the description of a large-
scale illustration of the phenomena of polarisation an
experiment which anyone can easily perform for himself
may assist in making clear exactly what the Nicol prism
accomplishes. First, suspend a rope about twenty feet long
from a bracket fixed in a high wall, hold it near its lower
end (about four feet from the ground) and impart to it a
brisk circular motion from the wrist. Several waves will
form along the length of the rope, and these waves will be
seen to be * three-dimensional.' Points on the rope within
the waves revolve continuously in larger or smaller circles,
points at the * nodes ' between the waves remain stationary.

Next, fix securely two square pieces of wood, each with
a long slit in its centre through which the rope can pass,
on brackets half-way up the wall, one above the other and
about eighteen inches apart. Arrange the boards at first
so that the slits are both parallel to the wall, and now wiggle
the rope as before. 1 Below the slits the waves are still circular
and three-dimensional, but above the slits they are flat and
two-dimensional. All motion in the rope above the boards
is in the plane of the slits, parallel to the wall. In other
words, the waves have been polarised.

Change the boards so that the slits are both perpendicular
to the wall, and the waves will be polarised in that direction.
Change one board only, so that one slit is parallel to the wall
and the other perpendicular, and now, work as you may,

1 Two boards are necessary, it may be noted, since if one only is used
a * node * is apt to form at that particular point and motion in all directions
passes through to the upper part of the rope. With two separate boards,
this is not possible.

THE FRENCH FARADAY AND THE DUTCH DAVY 105

you will never get any motion in the upper part of the rope
at all.

It is time, however, to come back to the polarimeter,
an instrument useful to the research chemist but indis
pensable to the sugar manufacturer. The reason is that
a solution of cane sugar in water has the power of ' rotating '
a ray of polarised light which is passed through it. The
undulations are twisted away from their original plane into
an entirely new one, the angle of the twist increasing with
the concentration of the sugar in the solution and with the
length of the tube containing it. By observing this angle
under standard conditions, the sugar manufacturer can
obtain a quick and certain test of the purity of his product.

In the polarimeter the angle of rotation can be observed
very simply by noting through what angle the second Nicol
prism, placed at the far end of the tube, must be twisted
from its original position, perpendicular to the first prism
at the near end, before a complete c black-out * is again
established. 1 Different kinds of sugar give quite different
degrees of rotation, and even the direction of the rotation
may vary. A solution of glucose, or grape sugar, for example,
rotates the plane of polarised light towards the right ; chemists
therefore frequently call it dextrose. A solution of fructose,
or fruit sugar, on the other hand, turns it to the left ; hence
the chemical name laevulose.

There are very few common substances, except sugars,
which possess this odd property of rotating polarised light
when dissolved in water, but natural tartaric acid and its
salts are among the few. And now, after this long digression,
it is possible to return to Louis Pasteur and to appreciate

1 In actual practice, more accurate results are obtained by matching * half-
shadows,* but the principle is exactly the same.

In connection with the * black-out * mentioned above, it may be remarked
that one scientific [?] explanation of the e Indian rope trick * is that the climber
has a Nicol prism concealed in each of his trouser-pockets and crosses his
legs on reaching the top, the " crossed Nicols * rendering him entirely invisible,
Unfortunately for this explanation, however, the native rope-climbers do not
possess trouser-pockets ; they do not even possess trousers ! Some alternative
explanation for their disappearance is therefore necessary.

I06 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

the significance of his work on the salts of tartaric and para-
tartaric acids.

Mitscherlich, it will be remembered, had reported in
1844 that crystals of ordinary sodium-ammonium tartrate
and crystals of sodium-ammonium para-tartrate were
absolutely identical. The young student engaged on his
first real research succeeded in noticing, however, something
which had escaped the observation of the skilled crystal-
lographer. There were small facets on both crystals that
Mitscherlich had overlooked, small facets which existed on

a

i n

FIG. 14 Crystals of (I) Sodium-ammonium diytfro-tartrate, and (II) Sodium-
ammonium Zflwo-tartrate, showing the heroihedral facets a and b.

only one-half of the corresponding corners. A little matter,
indeed, but one of profound significance !

For Pasteur, examining the tiny crystals with an eagle
eye, discovered that the tartrate and the para-tartrate did
differ with respect to these small c hemihedral ? facets. In
the natural tartrate, these facets were all on the same corners
of every crystal. In the para-tartrate., on the other hand,
half the individual crystals showed the facets on the same
corners as the tartrate, while the remaining half showed
them on the corners which, in the case of the tartrate, were
left.blank.

The minute difference between the two types of crystal
is best illustrated by means of large-scale models, in which
the hemihedral facets are more clearly observable. Three-

THE FRENCH FARADAY AND THE DUTCH DAVY 1 07

dimensional models, however, cannot be fitted into the
pages of a book, and the reader must make serve with the
diagrams above. Even these, he should note for his con
solation, represent crystals hundreds of times larger than
those with which Pasteur had to deal in practice, crystals
about the size of granulated sugar. What a marvellous feat
it was for him to spot the distinction for the first time, even
with the aid of the microscope !

Some readers, looking casually at the picture of the two
crystals on page 106, may still be sceptical that there is any
essential difference between them. c If I could only turn
the crystal on the right around, 5 they may feel, * I could make
it identical with the one on the left. 5 Well, try to put your
right hand into a left-hand glove ; it can't be done ! In
the same way, twist and turn the solid models of the crystals
as you will, they still insist on remaining different ; one can
never be superimposed on the other. The only way to
convert I to II, or vice versa, is to hold it in front of a mirror. 1
One crystal is, in fact, the mirror image of the other.

His heart beating with excitement, Pasteur now prepared
to proceed with the next stage of his research he was going
to anticipate Alice Through the Looking-glass \ With the help
of a pair of tweezers, he patiently picked out the tiny crystals
of sodium-ammonium para-tartrate one by one, examined
each under the microscope, and sorted all the crystals of the
first type into one dish and all the crystals of the second
type into another. He then dissolved each batch of crystals
in water and tested the two solutions separately in the
polarimeter. To his delight they were different. The
crystals that resembled the crystals of the natural tartrate
rotated, just as they did, the plane of polarisation to the
right, but the second set of crystals gave a solution which
rotated the plane of polarisation an equal amount in the
opposite direction to the left.

1 If you stand in front of a mirror while writing, you will find that your
reflection is writing with its left hand that is, assuming that you are right-
handed.

IO8 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

When Alice brought the Red Queen back with her
through the looking-glass, she turned into a kitten in her
hand, but Pasteur's laevo-ta.rta.ric acid, as he called it to
distinguish it from the ordinary dextro-tartaicic acid, was a
tangible product of paramount scientific importance. Pasteur
himself apprehended this at once ; like Archimedes, he cried,
c Eureka ! 5 He dashed out of his laboratory and embraced
a friend, M. Bertrand, whom he met in the passage, with
typical Gallic fervour. * I have made a great discovery ! *
he shouted, and dragged Bertrand out into the Luxembourg
Gardens to explain it to him in detail. Soon every chemistry
department in Paris was buzzing with the news.

Disbelief was almost universal. How could this un
known novice have succeeded in obtaining such surprising
results in a field which older and more experienced inves
tigators had worked threadbare ? It was rank disrespect
to assume for a minute that his amazing claims were correct.
Incredulity finally grew to such a pitch that a private trial
was arranged, the judge being none other than Jean Baptiste
Biot, the grand old man of French chemistry at that period.
Biot had been on the committee which awarded Davy the
prize for his first Bakerian lecture forty years before, he had
devoted practically his whole life to the study of polarisation,
he was now seventy-four, but his mind was still keen and
alert. Who could be better qualified to unmask a manifest
impostor ?

A graphic description of the trial, which took place at
Biot's laboratory in the College de France, has been given
by Pasteur's son-in-law and biographer, Rene Vallery-
Radot :

Biot began by fetching some para-tartaric acid. e I have
most carefully studied it,' he said to Pasteur ; e it is absolutely
neutral in the presence of polarised light.' Some distrust was
visible in his gestures and audible in his voice. c I shall bring
you everything that is necessary,' continued the old man, fetching
doses of soda and ammonia. He wanted the salt prepared before
his eyes.

THE FRENCH FARADAY AND THE DUTCH DAVY ICQ

After pouring the liquid into a crystalliser, Biot took it into
a corner of his room to be quite sure that no-one would touch
it. e I shall let you know when you are to come back/ he said
to Pasteur when taking leave of him. Forty-eight hours later
some crystals, very small at first, began to form ; when there
was a sufficient number of them, Pasteur was recalled. Still in
Biot's presence, Pasteur withdrew, one by one, the finest crystals
and wiped off the mother-liquor adhering to them. He then
pointed out to Biot the opposition of their hemihedral character,
and divided them into two groups left and right.

* So you affirm,' said Biot, 4 that your right-hand crystals
will deviate to the right the plane of polarisation, and your
left-hand ones will deviate it to the left ? *

* Yes,' said Pasteur.

c Well, let me do the rest.'

Biot himself prepared the solutions, and then sent again for
Pasteur. Biot first placed in the apparatus the solution which
should deviate to the left. Having satisfied himself that this
deviation actually took place, he took Pasteur's arm and said
to him these words, often deservedly quoted : e My dear boy,
I have loved Science so much during my life, that this touches
my very heart.'

Biot immediately constituted himself Pasteur's scientific
sponsor, submitted the account of his researches to the
French Academy of Sciences, and suggested that the Academy
should declare its highest approbation thereof. He stood
at Pasteur's side during many subsequent controversies
regarding his later discoveries. On 8 December 1862
Pasteur, in spite of intense opposition, was himself finally
elected a member of the Academy. Vallery-Radot relates :

The next morning, when the gates of the Montparnasse
cemetery were opened, a woman walked towards Biot's grave
with her hands full of flowers. It was Mme. Pasteur who was
bringing them to him who lay there since February 5, 1862,
and who had loved Pasteur with so deep an affection.

Space considerations permit here only the barest outlines
of Pasteur's later work work that has meant so much for

IIO GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

France in particular and for the world in general. In the
main, as has already been hinted, it lies outside the boundary
of chemistry proper.

It was a trifling incident that first turned Pasteur's
attention to the study of living organisms. In 1854, now
happily married and professor of chemistry at Strasbourg
University, he learned that a German firm of manufacturing
chemists was troubled over the fact that solutions of calcium
tartrate, left standing about in warm weather, fermented
and decomposed. Investigating the general question of
fermentation in tartrate solutions, he made the astonishing
discovery that, under the ordinary conditions of fermenta
tion, ^xifr0-tartrates alone were consumed, tow-tartrates
remaining unchanged. c I may say, in passing,' he remarks,
c that this is the best means of preparing /a^w-tartaric acid
from racemic acid. 3 Much easier, of course, to let the
ferment do all the work than to pick out the crystals one
by one yourself! But the biological significance of the
observation was to prove of much wider importance sub
sequently.

In the same year he was transferred to the University
of Lille, and since one of the leading industries of the district
was the manufacture of alcohol from beetroot and grain he
took up the study of fermentation in earnest He ultimately
showed that not only alcoholic fermentation, but also milk
fermentation, butter fermentation, in fact all fermentations,
are not merely chemical processes, as was the universal
opinion at that time, but depend entirely on the presence
of living organisms.

In 1857 he was again promoted, this time to the position
of Director of Scientific Studies at the cole Normale ; how
proud his old father must have been when he heard of it !
The promotion was not an unmixed blessing, nevertheless,
for Pasteur was publicly informed by a Government minister
that * the budget had no means at its disposal to provide
him with the sum of 1,500 francs a year for experimental
researches.' He was engaged to direct research, not to perform

THE FRENCH FARADAY AND THE DUTCH DAVY III

it ! Pasteur, at his own expense, however, constructed a
private laboratory out of an uninhabitable garret. Biot
fumed, but Pasteur said a little later : * I have grown
accustomed to my attic and I should be sorry to leave it.
Next holidays I hope to enlarge it/ It was in that attic
that he approached c the impenetrable mystery of Life and
Death. 3

How he exploded the age-long theory of e spontaneous
generation ' and proved with perfect finality that not only
fermentation processes, but also the processes of putrefaction
and decay, are the work of micro-organisms, no living cell
of which is ever produced from any other source than
another living cell, is a story that cannot be told in detail
in these pages. He had to contend with unparalleled pre
judice, misrepresentation and abuse, but he finally won the
day. His researches on the ' vinegar organism ' led him to
study the various ' diseases of wine,' which he showed were
all due to different micro-organisms and could be cured by
partial sterilisation at a moderate temperature. This simple
process, now known as * pasteurisation,' has since been
extended to become one of mankind's greatest boons. Its
widest application, during Pasteur's own lifetime, was to
the brewing industry. Frankland has remarked regarding
his volume entitled Studies on Beer Pasteur visited many
English breweries in the course of its preparation ; c We
must make some friends for our beloved France,' he would
say as follows :

I do not know whether this work has been consulted by
the great titled millionaires of the brewing world, or even whether
it is to be found in their libraries, but I do know that it has for
twenty years served as a gospel to those members of our profession
who are the brains and right hands of the great brewing concerns
of this country.

Even now, however, his great work was only beginning,
for his study of micro-organisms spread upwards from the
vegetable into the animal kingdom. Most aptly has he

112 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

been called c the Microbe Man,' since it is his miraculous
series of researches on bacteria, the action of bacteria on
their animal environment and the methods for fighting that
action that has rendered his name today famous throughout
the civilised world. He first saved the silk industry of France
from a disease which threatened the silkworm with extinction.
He assisted to solve the problems of fowl cholera, of swine
fever and of cattle anthrax. Most important of all, he
robbed many human diseases, such as puerperal fever and
hydrophobia, of their terror.

Lord Lister, the greatest of British surgeons, was proud
to acknowledge his indebtedness to Pasteur. Here is an
extract from a letter which he wrote in 1874 :

Allow me to take this opportunity to tender you my most
cordial thanks for having, by your brilliant researches, demon
strated to me the truth of the germ theory of putrefaction, and
thus furnished me with the principle upon which alone the
antiseptic system can be carried out. Should you at any time
visit Edinburgh, it would, I believe, give you sincere gratification
to see at our hospital how largely mankind is being benefited
by your labours.

Ten years later he did visit Edinburgh, to receive the
honorary degree of Doctor of Laws from the University at
its Tercentenary Celebrations. He was the hero of the
occasion ; Mr Younger, the brewer, even reserved a special
saloon car for him and his friends on the train from London.

And yet, while the real leaders of the medical profession
were acclaiming his achievements, he was being constantly
assailed with vituperation and abuse by its meaner members.
' How dares this chemist meddle with matters about which
he knows nothing ! ' was the constant cry. * Why, he has
not even got a medical degree ! * Time and time again his
results were questioned, time and time again he proved to
be right, but the struggle against prejudice and ignorance
never ceased until his death.

From the age of forty-six he had been crippled by

THE FRENCH FARADAY AND THE DUTCH DAVY 113

apoplexy, his left arm was stiff, he dragged one foot like
a wounded veteran. He had his father's spirit, however,
and he fought on to the end. He died on 28 September
1895. When he arrived at the great goal he might indeed
say with truth, c I have done what I could. 3

The whole French nation came to worship him in his
later years, and abroad he was almost equally popular. To
the very last, nevertheless, he retained the humble simplicity
of his youth. Representing France at the International
Medical Congress in London in 1881, he was about to
take a seat in the body of St James's Hall when, as Vallery-
Radot says :

He was recognised by one of the stewards, who invited him
to come to the platform reserved for the most illustrious members
of the Congress. As he was going towards the platform, there
was an outburst of applause, hurrahs, and acclamations. Pasteur
turned to his two companions, his son and his son-in-law, and said,
with a little uneasiness : e It is no doubt the Prince of Wales
arriving ; I ought to have come sooner/

e But it is you that they are all cheering,' said the President
of the Congress, Sir James Paget, with his grave, kindly smile.

In the early years of this century a French periodical
conducted a nation-wide vote on the question : c Who is
the greatest person in the history of France ? * The result
was most interesting. It was not Charlemagne, it was not
Joan of Arc, it was not even Napoleon who topped the list ;
Pasteur won hands down. His picture on the French postage
stamps will be familiar to many ; would it not be a wonder
ful thing if some day Great Britain should pay a similar
tribute to Faraday ?

The Pasteur Institute in Paris stands as a permanent
memorial to his genius. He is still more permanently en
shrined, however, in the hearts of men.

It is now necessary to return to the chemistry of space.
The theoretical significance of Pasteur's first discovery the

114 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

existence of dexfro-tartanc acid and laevo-tartaxic acid in
crystalline forms that are mirror images of each other
could not be fully grasped by the chemists of 1847. As
seen in the preceding chapter, the principles of the archi
tecture of organic compounds were then entirely unknown.
Pasteur, of course, did appreciate the fact that the different
positions of the hemihedral facets on the crystals and their
different effects on polarised light must be connected in
some subtle way with a difference in the inner arrangement
of the atoms. In a lecture published in 1860 he said : * Are
the atoms of the right acid grouped on the spirals of a helix
twisting rightwards, or placed at the summits of an irregular
tetrahedron ? We cannot answer these questions. 9

These questions were, in fact, not answered until 1874.
In that year, by an amazing coincidence, two young men
working in the same laboratory in Paris the laboratory of
Couper's old professor, Wurtz simultaneously arrived at
the same correct solution, each in complete ignorance of the
other's ideas. These two young men were Joseph Achille
Le Bel and Jacobus Henricus Van 't Hoff, 1 an Alsatian and
a Dutchman respectively.

This time, it is pleasant to state, there was no dispute
about priority. Both freely acknowledged that no com
munication on the subject had ever passed between them
and that their work had been entirely independent ; the
scientific world after a decent interval accorded equal
credit to both. There can be no doubt today, however,
that Van J t Hoff, the younger of the two, was the greater
genius. Le Bel, it is true, had a long and distinguished
chemical career, but he made no more really big discoveries ;
he rang the bell (pardon the pun !) only once. Van 't Hoff,
on the other hand, rang it repeatedly ; he was also a much
more picturesque personality. Consequently, since this

1 The name is frequently written * van't Hoff* ; in his later years in
Germany, indeed, in accordance with the German custom, he wrote it so
himself. Correct Dutch usage, however, demands the capital letter, as in
VanDyck.

THE FRENCH FARADAY AND THE DUTCH DAVY

chapter is already on the long side. Van 5 t Hoff only will
be dealt with in further detail.

If Pasteur may be styled c the French Faraday/ Van *t
Hoff can well be called e the Dutch Davy.' How genuine
an example he was of the romantic type of genius will become
obvious as his life-story unfolds.

His father was a practising physician in Rotterdam, and
it was in that city that he was born on 30 August 1852. At
school, while he was constantly near the head of his class,
he never succeeded in reaching the first place, if, indeed,
he ever tried. He was, however, awarded prizes by a local
musical society for singing and for pianoforte playing.
Chemistry appealed to him at an early age, as Sir James
Walker relates in his Memorial Lecture before the Chemical
Society :

Practical instruction in chemistry was given in the school,
and this evidently interested young Van 't HorT, for he with
some companions secretly repaired to the school on Sundays to
finish their class exercises, and to perform additional unauthorised
experiments. As they, boylike, enthusiastically chose to work
with highly poisonous or explosive substances, their private
investigations, when discovered, were brought to an abrupt end.
Van 9 t HofF, however, continued his experiments at home, and
conducted them on business-like lines, as he is reported to have
charged spectators a small fee, which was expended in the
purchase of fresh apparatus and material.

After leaving school he spent two years at the Polytechnic
Institute at Delft, but a holiday experience in a sugar factory
convinced him that technical chemistry was * a somewhat
monotonous occupation,' and he transferred to Leyden
University. Here also he chafed under the matter-of-fact
nature of his instruction ; in later life he declared that
under the influence of his Dutch professors he would have
become c a dried and shrivelled scientific conglomerate ' had
it not been for the counter-influence of Byron. For romantic
poetry, at this impressionable period, attracted him even

Il6 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

more strongly than chemistry. Burns and Heine he loved,
but Byron he adored. References to Byron, quotations from
Byron, abound in his letters, and together with much verse
in Dutch he wrote many Byronic stanzas in English. An
example will be given shortly.

The fame of Kekule attracted him to Bonn, and the
romantic atmosphere of the Rhine raised his spirits tem
porarily. He wrote to a friend : e In Leyden all was prose
the town, the country, the people. In Bonn all is poetry. 3
But soon he found Kekule unsympathetic, and he grew un
settled, melancholy, even bitter. An emotional disturbance
through which he passed about this time may have con
tributed to this. There was one c lady-student ? in Kekule's
laboratory, and lady-students in chemistry were rare, and
not always welcome to the male majority, in those days.
One morning Van 3 t Hoff learned that the poor girl had
committed suicide, and how deeply this affected him is
shown by a long Byronic elegy that he wrote the first
stanza of which may here be quoted :

Thy day is done, young champion of the free !

Thy glory and thy suffering are past.

As a weak beauteous flower's, where no tree

Can shelter it from cruel Autumn's blast ;

Which dies in silence lovely to the last ;

Gone as a day in Spring, gone as the dream

Of one that wakes no more ; and must it be

That thoughtful loneliness passes unseen,

Oh I shall thy hapless lot be lost in Lethe's stream ?

Those who do not think that this is good poetry for a boy
of twenty-one to write in the language of a country he had
never visited are invited to try to do better in Dutch.

So he continued his wanderings elsewhere, and went on
to Paris to study under Wurtz. He seems to have done
little in the way of practical research during his sojourn in
Wurtz's laboratory, and one of his fellow-students has
recorded : * He was so quiet that nobody paid much attention

Pasteur as a student at the Ecole Normale
Bv Charles Lebavle Photo Mairet

CO

.3

"O

"3

THE FRENCH FARADAY AND THE DUTCH DAVY 117

to him.' In that quiet head, however, unknown even to
Wurtz's young assistant, Le Bel, a great idea was being born.

That idea was, like all really great ideas, very simple.
A carbon atom in an organic compound can, according to
Couper and Kekule, be directly linked to four other atoms,
or groups of atoms ; in other words, it is quadrivalent. But
how are these four valences, or linkages, distributed in space ?
Van 't HofT boldly adopted the simplest possible theory in
this connection namely, that their space distribution is
geometrically symmetrical, all the linkages making equal
angles with one another. This condition can be satisfied
in only one way, by assuming that the four valences are
directed towards the four corners of a regular tetrahedron, 1
at the centre of which is the carbon atom.

A crude idea of Van 't HofFs model of a carbon atom
thus combined with four other atoms, or groups of atoms,
A, B, G and D, may be gained from diagram (I) on the
following page. It must be carefully remembered that this
model is, in reality, three-dimensional, the side BD being
invisible from the front. The reader will find the argument
that follows much easier to understand if he constructs a
model (or, rather, two models, since a second one will be
necessary immediately) for himself.

Now a pretty problem in solid geometry begins. Does
it make any essential difference in what positions the four
groups A, B, C and D are arranged ? In other words, is
there more than one space compound possible, or can you
always, by twisting and turning the tetrahedron about, make
any second arrangement identical with the first ?

If A, B, G and D are all the same kind of atom (as, for
example, in methane or marsh gas, CH 4 ) it is obvious at

1 A model of a regular tetrahedron may readily be made by cutting out,
from a sheet of stiff cardboard, four equal equilateral triangles. One is used
as a base and the other three arranged to stand on it, each with one side along
a side of the base and the top corners all touching. The edges are then all
fixed together with strips of gummed paper.

(969)

Il8 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

once that all possible arrangements are identical. If three
of them are the same, or even if only two of them are the
same, exactly the same conclusion follows, although it may
be necessary for you to twist and turn the tetrahedron several
times before you are convinced that this is the case. But
if all four are different, then an exhaustive trial will show
that there are two, and only two, essentially different ways
in which the four groups can be arranged. These two ways
are illustrated by (I) and (II) in the diagram. All other
ways may be made identical either with (I) or with (II)
by patient twisting and turning, but no amount of twisting

r JT

FIG. 15 Mirror-image tetrahedra

or turning will ever make (I) and (II) identical. One is,
in point of fact, the minor image of the other.

Thus did Van 't HofFs speculations join up with the
work of Pasteur, and the reason why certain organic com
pounds rotate the plane of polarised light, while others do
not, immediately suggested itself to him. For optical activity
to become possible, one condition must be fulfilled there
must be a carbon atom in the molecule that is linked up
with four different groups. Such a carbon atom is called
asymmetric, and it is its asymmetry that twists the light passing
through the molecule either to the right or to the left, depend
ing upon which of the alternative structures (I) or (II) the
compound possesses.

Le Bel approached the problem more generally he
mentions the tetrahedron only once in his paper but his

THE FRENCH FARADAY AND THE DUTCH DAVY

conclusions were exactly the same. Between them, these
two young chemists founded that important branch of science
known as stereochemistry the chemistry of space. As Sir
James Walker says :

Not only did they state the bare principle ; they showed
it was a living one, drew deductions from it, applied it on all
sides, and delivered it, in short, as an effective instrument into
the hands of their fellow-workers in chemistry.

Just one example of the perfect manner in which the
new ideas explained old facts will be presented here, and
it will be appropriate to choose tartaric acid as an illustration.
If the reader will refer back to Gouper's formula for this acid
(the last formula on p. 93) he will note that the second
carbon atom from the top is asymmetric. The groups to
which it is linked (remember, please, that Couper always
plants two oxygen atoms where only one should grow) are
COOH, H, OH and CHOH.GOOH respectively. But the
third carbon atom from the top is also asymmetric, and
inspection shows that it likewise is linked to precisely the
same four groups. How many different tartaric acids, then,
can there be ?

Careful consideration discloses that the possible tartaric
acids are four in number. In the first place, the two asym
metric carbon atoms may both induce a twist of light waves
passing through the molecule towards the right that gives
dextro-taxtaxic acid. Secondly, they may both induce a twist
towards the left that gives laevo-tartaiic acid. Thirdly, a
compound of dextro- and laevo-taxtaric acids may exist, in
which the two molecules, arranged alternately, exactly
neutralise the effect of each other that gives us ^ar^-tartaric
or racemic acid, which is inactive. And fourthly, one
asymmetric carbon atom in the molecule may twist the
light one way and the second in the same molecule twist it
the other. Since the twists will be equal, an inactive form
of the substance will again result, the inactivity here being
due to c internal compensation.' This fourth form of tartaric

120 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

acid- meso-tartaric acid was discovered by Pasteur him
self in 1853.

Meso-ta.rta.ric acid differs essentially from para-tartaric
acid in one important property. It cannot be broken up
into the dextro and loevo forms (or * resolved into optically
active isomers/ as the chemist calls it), since we cannot split
a single molecule in the middle without decomposing it
completely. Indeed, later investigation has shown that
Pasteur was really extraordinarily fortunate in performing
his first resolution of sodium-ammonium ^zra-tartrate success
fully. If his solutions of this substance had been slightly
warmer than they were, he would not have obtained any
right-handed or left-handed crystals at all, the pam-tartrate
would have crystallised out in its inactive form. Certain
chemists who rushed to prove Pasteur wrong were in such
a hurry that they could not wait to let their solutions evap
orate slowly at room temperature, but heated them in order
to drive off the water more rapidly. Naturally they did not
duplicate his results.

It might be thought that Van 't HofFs brilliant work
would have been hailed with immediate acclamation by his
contemporaries. Not a bit of it ; it was received with
indifference and coldness, none of the ' high heid yins 5
not even his own teachers, Kekule and Wurtz condescended
even to discuss or criticise his conclusions. Probably they
could not be bothered to read the original Dutch pamphlet
of September 1874, so Van *t Hoff republished this in
French. Still nobody paid much attention, and the poor
young man grew terribly discouraged. He actually con
sidered giving up chemistry altogether and emigrating to
Australia. The best position that he could obtain was an
assistantship in the Veterinary College at Utrecht.

Then the tide turned. In November 1875 he received
a cordial letter from the famous German chemist Wislicenus,
praising him to the skies and promising to write a special
preface to a German translation of his pamphlet. This

THE FRENCH FARADAY AND THE DUTCH DAVY 121

translation was printed late in 1876, and in May of the next
year it evoked the following caustic comment from the
mighty Kolbe, professor at Leipzig University :

A Dr Van 't HofFof the Veterinary College, Utrecht, appears
to have no taste for exact chemical research. He finds it a less
arduous task to mount his Pegasus (evidently borrowed from
the Veterinary College) and to soar to his chemical Parnassus,
there to reveal in his La chimie dans Vespace how he finds the atoms
situated in the world's void.

His hallucinations met with but little encouragement from
the prosaic chemical public. Dr F. Hermann, assistant at the
Agricultural Institute of Heidelberg, therefore undertook to give
them further publicity by means of a German edition. ... It
is not possible, even cursorily, to criticise this paper, since its
fanciful nonsense carefully avoids any basis of fact, and is quite
unintelligible to the calm investigator.

Kolbe continues by deploring the fact that two men
practically unknown, one from a veterinary school and the
other from an agricultural institute, should dare to express,
with such assurance, a judgment on c the most important
question in chemistry, which probably never will be solved.'
Their views appear to him to savour almost of * witch-
belief and spirit-rapping. 5 As for Wislicenus, who supports
them :

Herewith Wislicenus makes it clear that he has gone over
from the camp of the true investigators to that of the speculative
philosophers of ominous memory, who are separated by only
a thin medium from spiritualism.

After reading this diatribe, Van ? t Hoff at once went
out to the stables of the Veterinary College, had a photo
graph taken of the sorriest-looking hack there, put it on the
wall of his laboratory, and labelled it ' Pegasus ' ! Herein
he followed the example of his hero, Byron, who * drank
three bottles of claret to his own share after dinner ' when
the Edinburgh Review advised him to abandon poetry and

122 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

turn his talents to better account. He could, indeed, afford
to laugh at Kolbe. Like Byron after the publication of
Childe Harold, he might say : 6 1 awoke one morning to find
myself famous.'

The intervention of Wislicemzs had done the trick ;
henceforth no appointment in his native country was too
good for the young prodigy. Before he was twenty-six he
had risen to the position of professor of chemistry at the Uni
versity of Amsterdam. It was characteristic of him to choose
as the subject of his inaugural address * The Role of Imagina
tion in Science.' In this lecture he drew attention to the
imposing number of scientific men of the first rank (not
forgetting, of course, Humphry Davy !) who were also
distinguished for poetic and romantic invention, and closed
with the following quotation from Buckle :

There is a spiritual, a poetic, and for aught we know, a
spontaneous and uncaused element in the human mind, which
ever and anon, suddenly and without warning, gives us a glimpse
and a forecast of the future, and urges us to seize truth as it were
by anticipation.

Evidently there was to be no danger of students becoming
c dried and shrivelled scientific conglomerates ' under Van 't
HofFs instruction. He spent eighteen years in the University
of Amsterdam, and the atmosphere of his laboratory has
been vividly described by one of his assistants thus :

Whoever knows the Amsterdam laboratory knows that things
do not take place there in any ordinary way. There is some
thing mystical, something uncanny in the air. And this demonic
something is the belief one might call it the superstition if
success had not so often followed it the belief of Van 't HofT
thatjhis fundamental idea, the analogy between chemical and
physical phenomena, is profoundly true.

The most important of the many discoveries he made at
Amsterdam deals with a new topic, the nature of solutions.
This discovery will be described in detail in the following

THE FRENCH FARADAY AND THE DUTCH DAVY 123

chapter, where a brief account of Van 't HofFs later career
is also included.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Life of Pasteur. R. Vallery-Radot, 1928
The Microbe Man. Eleanor Doorly, 1938

Memorial Lectures delivered before the Chemical Society : * The
Pasteur Memorial Lecture/ P. F. Frankland, 1897; "The
Van 3 t Hoflf Memorial Lecture,' Sir James Walker, 1913.

Jacobus Henricus Van 't Hof : Sein Leben und Wirken. E. Cohen,
1912.

CHAPTER V
THE CHEMISTRY OF SOLUTIONS

PRIOR to 1883 solutions were considered to be purely chemical
in their nature ; when sugar was dissolved in water, for
instance, all the sugar was supposed to be combined with
all the water. The attractive forces holding the molecules
of solvent and of solute together, however, were regarded
as relatively small. This assumption was necessary in order
to explain why solutions did not contain solvent and solute
in simple molecular proportions ; it was the weak affinity
between their components that rendered solutions c com
pounds of indefinite composition. 5

Van J t Hoff wanted very badly to study this ' affinity '
experimentally and find out exactly how small the attractive
forces were. He had been astonished to run across an old
statement by Mitscherlich to the effect that even in the
crystal of a * salt hydrate, 5 such as Glauber's salt (sodium
sulphate decahydrate : Na 2 SO 4 ,ioH 2 O), the affinity corre
sponded to a pressure of only about one-half of one per
cent of an atmosphere. This value, for a compound in
which the components were present in definite propor
tions, struck Van 't Hoff as unbelievably minute. Even in
solutions, he argued, the affinity must be much greater than
this. But how to measure this affinity ?

With this question upon his lips the young professor
walked out of his laboratory one day, met his colleague
Hugo de Vries, professor of botany, and started to tell him
his troubles. De Vries, however, proved to be the better
talker, and soon Van 9 t Hoff found himself listening to an
account of his experimental work. What he heard was so
interesting that he did not interrupt.

De Vries had been observing through a microscope the
withering of plants when placed in salt solutions. He had

THE CHEMISTRY OF SOLUTIONS 125

found that the tiny ceils in a leaf, cells that were originally
filled -with fluid, tended to collapse when the leaf was
immersed in a concentrated salt solution, most of the water
within the walls of the cell being sucked out into the solution.
This flow of water through the cell walls was known as
osmosis. When, on the other hand, the leaf was immersed
in pure water, the cells became distended and turgid, owing
to osmosis inwards. De Vries had also noted the fact that
the protoplasmic layer lining the cell wall allowed only
water to pass through it, being impermeable to the salt
outside the cell and also to the organic solutes in the fluid
inside. The cell wall functioned, in fact, as what is called
a e semi-permeable membrane/ De Vries had even succeeded
in establishing a connection between the concentrations of
different salts outside when an immersed cell remained un
changed in other words, when osmosis in both directions
exactly balanced. Such solutions he termed isotonic, since
they exercised the same e osmotic pressure. 5

Van J t Hoffat once saw the significance of these observa
tions from the chemical point of view, and asked his colleague
if any botanist had ever made any quantitative measure
ments on the osmotic pressure of solutions. De Vries replied,
c Yes, a German named PfefFer did some on sugar solutions
in 1877, using an artificial membrane of copper ferrocyanide/
and gave Van 't Hoflf the reference to Pfeffer's work.

That reference was all that Van 3 t Hoff needed. He
found, as he had expected, that the osmotic pressure was
not an insignificant quantity. For a six per cent solution of
cane sugar in water at room temperature, indeed, it was
equivalent to about four atmospheres. If the concentration
of the sugar was doubled, the osmotic pressure was doubled,
just as the gaseous pressure is in the case of a gas. If the
temperature was raised, the osmotic pressure increased in
proportion to the absolute temperature, again just as the
gaseous pressure does in the case of a gas. All the laws of
osmotic pressure, in fact, were exactly analogous to the
general gas laws.

126 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

The establishment of osmotic pressure by Van 3 t Hoff
as a properly of fundamental importance in the study of
solutions led to a great influx of research workers into this
field. It is recognised now that osmosis plays a paramount
part in plant life it explains the utilisation of fertilisers and
the rise of sap in trees. In the animal body also, osmosis
is of considerable significance. Here, however, we must
restrict ourselves to its chemical aspects.

Van 't Hoff made osmotic pressure, indeed, the central
pillar of a new theory of solutions. Recklessly abandoning
the whole idea of c affinity ' between solvent and solute with
which he had started, he postulated now that there was
nothing essentially chemical about solutions at all. In a
dilute solution we may consider the solute to be, to all intents
and purposes, in the gaseous state. The solvent may be
entirely disregarded : it simply affords a medium wherein the
solute is enabled to exhibit the properties of a gas.

This theory proved of tremendous service, in the years
that followed, in the rapid development of a new branch
of chemistry physical chemistry. It is true that all the
assumptions on which it was founded have not stood the
test of time, and that it represents merely a limiting case
of the more modern theory of ideal solutions. But, when
Van 't Hoff first announced it in 1884, in his great book
tudes de dynamique chimique, he certainly rang the bell again.
A Swedish reviewer l stated :

Although the author has already gained a great name by
his power of wresting secrets from Nature, his former efforts are
placed entirely in the shade by this work. An enormous per
spective has been opened up for future investigation.

German universities vied with each other for years in
trying to induce the Dutch Davy to transfer his activities
to their country, and finally in 1896 he succumbed. The
fact was that he had got tired of his heavy load of routine

1 This reviewer, then a completely unknown and humble research student
in Stockholm, was Svante Arrhenius, whom we shall meet again shortly.

THE CHEMISTRY OF SOLUTIONS 127

teaching and administrative work at Amsterdam, and the
Prussian Academy of Science demanded from him only one
lecture a week, with the rest of his time free for research.
A special laboratory was provided for him in a pleasant
suburb of Berlin, and during the next ten years more than
fifty papers by Van 't Hoff and his research students issued
from this laboratory. Most of these papers were connected
with an exhaustive investigation of the potash deposits at
Stassfurt, a question of the greatest theoretical and practical
interest, since the whole world then depended upon these
deposits for the potassium salts necessary to farmers for
fertilisers.

The early sparkle, however, had vanished from him.
Like Dpy, he had burnt himself out at the age of fifty,
and like Davy he sought consolation in foreign travel. He
died at Berlin on i March 1911. Sir James Walker has
said of him :

He was, in my judgment, the greatest chemical thinker of
his generation. If any should dispute this judgment, I can
only reply that our science is indeed favoured when such dispute
is possible.

That no real dispute is possible is evidenced by the fact that,
when the Nobel Prize in chemistry was instituted, in 1901,
Van 't Hoff was the first recipient.

While Van 't Hoff was developing his new theory of
solutions in Amsterdam, a young Swede was wrestling with
a problem that he had set himself for his doctor's thesis at
Upsala University. This young Swede, Svante Arrhenius,
was destined to do as much for solutions as Van 3 t Hoff
himself.

Svante Arrhenius was born at Wijk, a village on Lake
Malar, on 19 February 1859. He came of farmer stock,
and at the time of his birth his father was the manager of
an estate at Wijk, but shortly afterwards the family moved

128 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

to Upsala. As an undergraduate at Upsala University
Svante was not exceptionally brilliant ; his professors
chiefly remembered him as President of the Aurora Club,
a convivial student society with the sole rule that its meet-
Lags should never break up before dawn. Since dawn
arrives very late in Scandinavia during the winter months,
this responsibility must have interfered considerably with his
classes. On his side he found his professors, who taught the
chemistry of twenty years back, deadly dull, so that when
he reached the stage of independent research he selected
a thesis subject for himself and went to Stockholm to work
on it.

He had heard in his lectures how it was impossible at that
time to determine the molecular weight of a substance, such
as sugar, that could not be vaporised with decomposition.
He believed he could solve this problem by measuring the
effect of addition of sugar on the electrical conductivity of
salt solutions. Sugar decreases the conducting power of such
solutions, so to a lesser degree do substances like alcohol and
glycerine, the molecular weights of which are known, and
Svante thought that by comparing the decreases he could
arrive at the molecular weight of sugar. He soon found
that he was wrong, but he continued his conductivity
measurements on salt solutions of all kinds and concentra
tions, speculating all the time on the question : * What
makes a salt solution conduct the electric current anyway ? 3

Davy and Faraday, and all previous investigators in the
field of electrochemistry, had noted the appearance of the
simple radicals composing the salt for example, copper and
chlorine in the case of cupric chloride at the separate
electrodes, but had never thought it possible that these
radicals might exist independently in the solution even
before the current was passed. Arrhenius argued that they
must, and that the passage of the current through the whole
bulk of the solution could only be explained by assuming
that the positive radical (e.g. copper) is attracted to the
cathode because it carries a positive electrical charge, while

THE CHEMISTRY OF SOLUTIONS 129

the negative radical (e.g. chlorine) travels towards the anode
because it possesses a negative electrical charge. Following
Farada/s nomenclature, he called these free radicals, bearing
electric charges, ions.

How now to explain the fact that some substances in
water solution conduct the current excellently and some
poorly, while in all cases the relative conducting power
increases as the solution is made more dilute ? l Arrhenius
met this difficulty by assuming that substances like sodium
chloride, sodium hydroxide and hydrochloric acid, which
are good conductors or strong electrolytes^ are very largely
broken up into ions when dissolved in water. Substances
like ammonium hydroxide and acetic acid, on the other
hand, which are poor conductors or weak electrolytes,, give only
a very small proportion of ions. Both classes behave alike,
however, in one respect the extent of ionisation increases
with dilution. To put the matter briefly in chemical nota
tion, we have for a conducting substance RX dissolved in
water the equilibrium :

In the case of strong electrolytes the forward reaction pre
dominates, in the case of weak electrolytes the backward
reaction, but for all electrolytes the forward reaction is
favoured by dilution.

Arrhenius found, further, that there were really two
factors conditioning the conductivity of a solution, the
number of ions between the electrodes and the speed with
which they move. Strong acids and strong bases are better
conductors than the salts to which they give rise by mutual
neutralisation, because the hydrogen ion H + of acids and
the hydroxyl ion OH~ of bases are particularly speedy.
Weak acids and weak bases, however, are worse conductors

1 In other words, halving the concentration of the salt in the solution docs
not lower the conductivity to one-half its original value.

I3O GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

than the salts which they form, since all salts are strong
electrolytes.

All these theoretical points, together with the tabulation
of his experimental results, made the final draft of Svante's
dissertation for his doctorate a very bulky affair. He dared
not mention ions openly, that would be too dangerous. It was
therefore necessary for him to do an extraordinary amount
of padding in order to camouflage the full implications of his
revolutionary ideas from his conservative examiners at
Upsala, upon whose sympathies he could scarcely count.
The first convert to his theory, he states, was the janitor
of the chemistry department, whose duty it was to deposit
the statutory number of copies of his thesis in the University
library. He had never had such a burden to bear before,
and its weight convinced him that the young man who wrote
it must be a wonderful chemist !

The examining committee, however, thought otherwise ;
they treated the candidate like c a stupid schoolboy, 5 and
Arrhenius had a very narrow escape from being failed
ignominiously. Finally it was grudgingly decided to award
him a c fourth-class degree ' for his dissertation. 1 Regarding
this decision Sir James Walker has remarked :

After every allowance has been made for the novel and
unusual character of the dissertation, it is difficult to see how
the University of Upsala, the university of Bergman and Berzelius,
should have condemned a brilliant thesis on the very subjects
of affinity and electrochemistry associated with these names.
For the award amounted to a condemnation ; in view of it
Arrhenius could not normally become a docent in the University
of Upsala.

Poor Svante was in the depths of despair, for he did
want to continue chemical research. What could he do
with all the spare copies of this unfortunate thesis still in

1 The four classes at Upsala are : summa am lauds (with highest honours),
magna cum lauds (with great honour), cum laude (with honour), and non sine
Imide (not without honour).

THE CHEMISTRY OF SOLUTIONS 131

his possession ? He sent them through the post to famous
professors abroad, praying that some of these would prove
more appreciative. Practically every copy went straight
into the wastepaper-basket on receipt. Only Wilhelm
Ostwald, then a professor at Riga, always on the alert to
recognise a young genius, saw that here he had one, but
so tied up with red tape that it was difficult to disentangle
him.

Ostwald relates how he received this dissertation from
Arrhenius on the same day that his wife presented him with
a nice daughter ; he was also suffering from a nasty tooth
ache. c It was too much for one day ! * he said. 6 The worst
was the dissertation, for the others developed quite normally.'
At last, unable to sift the wheat from the chaff in the argu
ment on the printed pages, he made up his mind to cross
the Baltic and thrash it out with Arrhenius himself in Upsala.

Great was the excitement in the chemical laboratory
when the famous Ostwald arrived ; greater still the astonish
ment when it was learned that he had made the journey
specially to discuss crazy ideas with a fourth-class nobody !
But, as Arrhenius records, they had some very pleasant days
together, making plans for the development of the whole
of chemistry. * Everything seemed to us so regular and fine,
but the reality has been much better. 5

Then Ostwald visited the head of the chemistry depart
ment, Professor Cleve, in his laboratory. Arrhenius entered
a little later ; he was not expected. He heard Gleve say :
c In this glass I have a solution of sodium chloride ; do you
believe there are sodium and chlorine in it ? Do they look
so ? * * c Oh, yes/ Ostwald said as tactfully as possible,
6 there is some truth in that idea. 5 Then they saw Svante
and the discussion was at an end ; he was very sorry.

1 Geve's very questions betray the fact that he had never grasped erne
fundamental point in the theory of Arrhenius, namely that sodium ions in
solution and chlorine ions in solution are, by virtue of their electrical charges,
entirely distinct substances from metallic sodium and gaseous chlorine. Many
of the most bitter opponents of the ionic theory were afflicted with the same
disability to understand it properly.

132 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

Ostwald did prevail upon Cleve, nevertheless, to grant
Arrhenius a junior teaching position in the laboratory at
Upsala. He wanted him to come to Riga to collaborate
with him on their projected scheme of research in -physical
chemistry, but the illness and subsequent death of Arrhenius's
father kept him in Sweden another year. In December 1 885
he received a valuable travelling scholarship from the
Swedish Academy of Sciences which enabled him to wander
at will around the continent of Europe for the next five years.
He worked with Ostwald in Riga, with Kohlrausch in
Wtirzburg, with Boltzmann in Graz, with Planck in Kiel,
with Van 't Hoff in Amsterdam, and again with Ostwald,
now in Leipzig. It was during this protracted c bus
man's holiday ' that the theory of ionisation was finally
perfected.

His association with Van J t Hoff was particularly pro
pitious. Not only did the two men become brothers rather
than friends, but each found that his own half of the new
general theory of solutions dovetailed exactly into the other's
half; each could utilise the other's ideas to establish his own.
For instance, Van 5 t Hoff had been quite at a loss to explain
why conducting solutions did not conform to his osmotic
pressure equations at all. Dilute solutions of salts like sodium
chloride, NaCl, gave almost twice the calculated values ;
dilute solutions of salts like calcium chloride, GaCl 2 , gave
almost thrice the calculated values, and so on. With the
help of Arrhenius, this difficulty vanished like a cloud into
thin air. The double value for NaCl is due to its dissociation
in solution into Na + and Cl~~, and confirms this dissociation.
The triple value for CaCl 2 is due to its dissociation into three
ions, Ga" 1 " 1 " and 2G1~. Arrhenius could at last venture to
talk freely about ions. As Sir James Walker remarks :

The theories of osmotic pressure and of electrolytic dissocia
tion were now fairly launched, and, propelled by the driving-
power of Ostwald through the waters of scientific opinion, they
soon attained a world-wide recognition, though often meeting
very heavy weather.

>
'Jl.

THE CHEMISTRY OF SOLUTIONS 133

One storm deserves description. The older generation
of chemists was already finding difficulty in swallowing the
fact that sugar, dissolved in water, was a gas, and when
they heard that salt, dissolved in water, was broken up into
sodium and chlorine ions, their stomachs rebelled. This wild
army of lonians, as Ostwald and his school at Leipzig came
to be called, was getting beyond all control ; it must be
curbed. At the British Association Meeting at Leeds in
1890 a pretty plot was laid. Ostwald, Van >t Hoff and
Arrhenius were all invited to attend a discussion on c Theories
of Solution, 3 and to present their views. Their papers,
however, were carefully placed at the very end of the pro
gramme, the idea being that after they had listened to
lectures from their orthodox elders for a few days they
would be convinced of their folly and recant.

The plot was a dismal failure. It was only the old-
timers who remained in the lecture-room to doze or drone
while antiquated theories were discussed, the young enthu
siasts were out in the corridors, clustered around Ostwald
and Van 't Hoff (Arrhenius, the third of c The Three Mus
keteers, 5 could not attend himself, but sent a paper which
was read by Walker). Before the end of the meeting all
the coming chemists of Great Britain had followed the lead
of William Ramsay and James Walker, and were enlisted
under the Ionic banner. The diehards sadly dispersed. One
by one, as years rolled by, they were converted to the new
faith, or dropped out of chemistry altogether. Only Henry
Edward Armstrong never ceased to wield a vitriolic pen
against the gospel of Arrhenius ; he died in 1937, still
refusing to admit that ions exist.

The ionic theory might be established, but Arrhenius
himself still lacked a definite position. Germany offered
him the chair of chemistry at Giessen in 1 89 1 , but so intensely
patriotic was he that he refused then, as he frequently refused
later, to settle down outside of Sweden. In his native
country, nevertheless, he still received scant recognition.
When, in 1895, it was proposed to convert a lectureship

10

134 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

which he held in the Technical High School at Stockholm
into a professorship, his opponents raised a chorus of protest
against his promotion. A committee of three Lord Kelvin,
the eminent British physicist, Christiansen, a Dane, and
Hasselberg, a Swede was appointed to report upon his com
petence. Ostwald wrote indignantly, e It is preposterous to
question the scientific standing of such a giant as Arrhenius ! '
Yet the committee, following the lead of Lord Kelvin (who
really ought to have known better), voted two to one against
Arrhenius, Christiansen alone being in his favour. It was
only in default of another suitable candidate that Arrhenius
was finally given the appointment. The next year he was
elected Rector of the Technical High School, six years later
he was awarded the Davy Medal of the Royal Society, the
following year he was presented with the Nobel Prize.

In 1905, returning from a triumphal tour in America, he
passed through Berlin, and received from the Prussian
Academy a tempting proposal to join his old comrade,
Van 't Hoff, there. Sweden was aghast ; the prophet was
now not without honour even in his own country, and even
old King Oscar expressed the wish that Arrhenius ' should
not be allowed to leave. 9 The Swedish Academy of Sciences
accordingly resolved to found forthwith a Nobel Institute
for Physical Chemistry, with Arrhenius as its director.

Thus then, at Experimentalfaltet, a beautiful park just
outside Stockholm, a small laboratory with an official
residence attached was inaugurated in 1909. * Here, with
an assistant and a few research workers as guests, 1 Arrhenius
could work and write under ideal conditions on such prob
lems of physical chemistry, physiological chemistry, im-
munochemistry, meteorology and cosmic physics as might
please him.*

1 The author himself spent a happy year as a research student in this
laboratory in 1912-13. It was during this period that a fellow-guest, now
Professor Hugh Stott Taylor, F.R.S., of Princeton University, took the snap
shot of Arrhenius with his young son on his knee reproduced in the picture
facing p. 132.

THE CHEMISTRY OF SOLUTIONS 135

For he had become, in his prime, a man of most varied
interests, and he touched nothing that he did not adorn.
As Sir James Walker states :

The stormy period of Arrhenius's career was now definitely
over, and from the time of his appointment to the Nobel Institute
life went very smoothly with him. From being a scientific out
cast in Sweden he became a scientific oracle, known and respected
by all classes of the people. 1

The same authority may also be drawn upon for a
summary of the personality of this great scientist, who died
at Experimentalfaltet on 2 October 1927 :

Arrhenius had nothing academic about him save learning.
In person he was stoutly built, blond, blue-eyed and rubicund,
a true son of the Swedish countryside. His nature was frank,
generous and expansive. He was full of robust vitality and
primitive force. He had hearty likes and dislikes, and beneath
his inborn geniality and good-humour was a latent combative-
ness, easily aroused in the cause of truth and freedom.

Sweden can boast of many eminent names in science, of which
two are by common consent of the first magnitude Linnaeus
and Berzelius. Since the death of Berzelius she has had no name
to rank with these save the name of Arrhenius. Yet withal
Svante Arrhenius was so simple, so genuine, so human a person
ality, that those who had the privilege of his intimacy always
forgot the great scientific master in the genial companion and
the kindly, lovable friend.

The theory of ionisation has had many important com
mercial applications. The manufacture of battery-cells, the
electrolytic refining of metals, electroplating, the electrolytic
production of useful chemicals all these represent fields in
which the work of Arrhenius has enabled the industrial

1 A personal anecdote in proof of this may be cited. One day I was walk
ing with Arrhenius in Stockholm. A man sweeping the streets raised his hat
as we passed and said, * Good-morning, Professor ! J Arrhenius gravely returned
hi salute. A minute later, we met a distinguished-looking gentleman who
gave exactly the same greeting and received exactly the same response. I
thought I had seen the gentleman's face before and asked Arrhenius who he
might be. His reply was : * King Gustav * !

136 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

chemist to replace rule-of-thumb methods by scientific
principles, with consequent enormous improvements in
technique. In one important respect, however, his original
ideas have been discovered to require modification in a
direction that would have surprised his old board of
examiners. He hesitated to tell them that strong electrolytes
were extensively dissociated into ions. What he should have
told them is that they are completely ionised.

It will be remembered that Arrhenius found that the

fcr

FIG. 1 6 Rock-salt crystal lattice

conductivity of a solution is conditioned by two factors, the
number of ions between the electrodes and the speed with
which they move. When his experimental results showed
that the relative conducting power increases with dilution,
he assumed that this was due to an increase in the extent
of ionisation, the speed of the individual ions remaining
constant. This is not the case with strong electrolytes.
They are always one hundred per cent ionised, but the
speed of the ions increases steadily to a maximum as dilution
reduces the * drag ' which their environment exerts upon
their motion through the solution.

Our modern theory of complete ionisation was first
suggested by the discovery, through the X-ray analysis of

THE CHEMISTRY OF SOLUTIONS 137

crystals, that even in crystalline salts undissociated molecules
do not exist. In a crystal of sodium chloride, for instance,
there is no molecular NaGl ; there is, instead, a regular
arrangement of alternate sodium ions Na^ and chlorine ions
Cl~ in a cubical lattice structure, as indicated in the diagram
on page 136.

The elucidation of the interior structure of crystals by
means of X-rays in recent years has been largely due to
the pioneer work of the late Director of the Royal Institution,

FIG. 1 7 Ultimate structure of a diamond

Sir William Bragg, and his son, Sir Lawrence Bragg, who
succeeded Lord Rutherford as Cavendish Professor of
Experimental Physics at Cambridge University, For their
joint discoveries in this field they were awarded the Nobel
Prize in 1915, when the younger recipient was only twenty-
five. He justly deserves, therefore, to be added to our
gallery of young chemists. With the help of X-rays we are
at last able to obtain a perfect picture of the space relation
ship of the atoms in any molecule, however complex. In
the case of electrolytes, as has been mentioned, the molecule
may drop out of sight, as a molecule, altogether. In organic
compounds, however, which are predominantly non-electro
lytes, the experimental results obtained have confirmed in

138 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

a remarkable way the fundamental theories of previous
workers, such as Kekule and Van *t Hoff.

A glance at the diagram on page 1375 which illustrates
the ultimate arrangement of carbon atoms in the diamond,
will make this immediately evident. Note the tetrahedral
arrangement of the four carbons to which any single atom
is directly linked. Note also the prominent c sign of the
hexagon, ' the framework of the benzene ring. The same
essential features are to be found in the X-ray space models
of all organic compounds.

In conclusion, it is interesting to note that, although
X-ray crystal analysis as an art was not developed until
1912, Crum Brown at the University of Edinburgh intuitively
constructed a space model of the crystal lattice of common
salt, identical with our model of today, as long ago as 1883*
He did not know anything about ions then, of course, but
his three-dimensional mind told him that the atoms just had
to be built together that way. It is not, perhaps, altogether
surprising that the same man who displayed such ingenuity
in the Couper Quest should here again prove his ability,
in the words of Van *t Hoff, * to seize truth as it were by
anticipation.*

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Memorial Lectures delivered before the Chemical Society : e The Van 't
Hoff Memorial Lecture. 3 Sir James Walker, 1913 ; ' The
Arrhenius Memorial Lecture. 5 Sir James Walker, 1928

Lebenslinien. W. Ostwald, 1926-7

Eminent Chemists of our Time. B. Harrow, 1920

Crucibles. B. JafFe, 1 930

* Electrolytic Dissociation.* S. Arrhenius, Journal of the American
Chemical Society, 1912

CHAPTER VI
ELEMENTS OLD

THE ancient Greek philosophers were very fond of discus
sions, especially when no final decision on the point at issue
appeared possible. Impromptu debates on subjects such as :
c Which came first, the hen or the egg ? ' e Gould Achilles
ever catch the tortoise ? * and * What happens when an
irresistible force meets an immovable object ? * whiled away,
no doubt, many long winter evenings in Attica, Two
chemical problems, hi particular, provoked most intense
speculation the continuity of matter and its ultimate origin.

All matter, according to Democritus, was granular in
its structure ; it was made up of minute particles or c atoms/
and when we had (in fancy or otherwise) sub-divided any
particular sample of matter until we had reached individual
atoms, then it was impossible to persevere any longer, since
the atoms were indestructible, indivisible, unchangeable and
eternal. The opposite opinion of Anaxagoras, however, that
all matter was continuous and infinitely divisible, gained
universal prestige through its adoption by the school of
Aristotle, and until the beginning of the nineteenth century
atoms remained completely in eclipse. As regards the
ultimate source of matter, some favoured fire, others air,
others water, others earth, but a compromise was finally
reached whereby it was postulated that there were four
c elements ' fire, air, water and earth and that all matter
was built up out of these four elements, assembled together
in different proportions.

This opinion, although assailed by the alchemists in the
Middle Ages, who based their faith on the three principles
mercury, sulphur and salt survived until the middle of
the seventeenth century. A typical argument in its support
is quoted by Boyle in his Sceptical Ckymist :

139

I4O GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

If you will but consider a piece of green wood burning in
a chimney, you will readily discover in the disbanded parts of
it the four elements. . . . The fire discovers itself in the flame
by its own light ; the smoke by ascending to the top of the
chimney, and then readily vanishing into air, like a river losing
itself in the sea, sufficiently manifests to what element it belongs
and gladly returns. The water in its own form boiling and
hissing at the ends of the burning wood betrays itself to more
than one of our senses ; and the ashes by their weight, their
fineness, and their dryness, put it past doubt that they belong
to the element of earth.

Robert Boyle c the father of chemistry and the brother
of the Earl of Cork 5 proceeded to refute both the hermetic
philosophers, who set their trust in the four elements of
Aristotle, and the vulgar spagyrists, who believed in the
three principles, and put forward the following as his own
definition of the term c element ' :

I mean by elements certain primitive and simple, or perfectly
unmingled bodies ; which not being made of any other bodies,
or of one another, are the ingredients of which all those called
perfectly mixt bodies are immediately compounded, and into
which they are ultimately resolved.

Chemistry was still not sufficiently advanced at the time
of Boyle for this definition to be given immediate practical
application the phlogiston theory constituting the chief
stumbling-block but a century later Lavoisier placed it on
a definite experimental basis, and all substances were re
garded as worthy of the name of elements which could not
be decomposed into, or built up by combination from, other
substances in the laboratory. It is true that a few substances
caused a great deal of controversy before their status could
finally be agreed upon quicklime, for example, was con
sidered an element until Davy decomposed it by means of
an electric current in 1808, and chlorine was long thought to
be a compound of some other element with oxygen but as
chemists grew more experienced in their methods of attack

<G

ELEMENTS OLD 14!

the debatable cases became fewer and fewer, and the list of
recognised elements steadily grew until by 1890 an apparent
maximum of 92 was attained. Thejy&zjval of the atomic
theory by Dalton enabled us to assign a definite atomic weight
to each element, but the atoms of different elements were
regarded as fundamentally distinct. If the chemist of the
nineteenth century ever visualised the atom he visualised it
as a tiny hard round ball ; it was something static ; it was
dead matter ; transmutation was a foolish dream of the
alchemists.

There had been, it must be noted, an interesting sugges
tion advanced in 1815 by William Prout, a young Edinburgh
medical graduate, that all atomic weights could be expressed
by whole numbers with hydrogen, the lightest, as unity, and
that the atoms of all elements might therefore be built up
from more or less complex aggregates of atoms of hydrogen*
At first Prout's idea gained considerable support, but as
more exact analytical methods were developed, divergences
from integral values for the atomic weights of the heavier
elements became so obvious that in 1860 the Belgian chemist
Stas wrote the doom of Prout's hypothesis in the words :

I have arrived at the absolute conviction, the complete
certainty, so far as it is possible for a human being to attain
to certainty in such matters, that the law of Prout is nothing
but an illusion, a mere speculation definitely contradicted by
experience.

This chapter will show how, in spite of the pronounce
ment of Stas, the 92 elements have been gradually classified
into groups and finally shown to possess a common ultimate
basis. The twentieth century accepts transmutation as an
accomplished fact.

The first hint that relationships between the atomic
weights of different elements did exist came as a direct
consequence of the discovery of bromine by Balard later

142 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

Pasteur's professor, then a young man of twenty-three In
1826. Bromine, a red-brown liquid with a suffocating smell,
stands midway between chlorine and iodine in its properties.
So strikingly does it straddle these elements in every respect
that, when a sample had been sent to the eminent Liebig
some years before, he reported that it was e iodine chloride.'
On hearing of Balard's discovery, Liebig kicked himself and
put the bottle containing the sample in a special cabinet
which he called his s cupboard of mistakes.' An unknown
student, unhampered by preconceived ideas, had scored
not for the first nor the last time in chemistry over a world-
famous professor.

Three years later it was pointed out by Dobereiner that
the atomic weight of bromine, which had just been deter
mined, agreed almost exactly with a prediction he had made
that it would be ' the arithmetic mean of the atomic weights
of chlorine and iodine/ l Dobereiner drew attention to the
fact that other sets of three elements with closely similar
properties existed, where the atomic weight of the central
element also stood half-way between the other two. Examples
are lithium - sodium - potassium and calcium - strontium -
barium. These sets of three became known as c Dobereiner's
triads/ but chemists in general did not spare much thought
on what was considered to be merely a curious coincidence.
Nor were they a whit more interested, indeed, when a young
man named Newlands made a much more significant dis
covery in 1864.

John- Alexander Reina Newlands, to give him his full
name, was born in Southwark only a few minutes' walk
from Faraday's birthplace in 1837. His father was a
minister of the Established Church of Scotland, his mother
was of Italian descent. Like Perkin, Newlands early imbibed
a taste for chemistry/ and he entered the Royal College
of Chemistry to study under Hofmann just as Perkin was
leaving it in 1856. He was fated, however, to pass out of

1 The presently accepted values are CH 35-46, Br 79*92, I 126-92. * The
arithmetic mean of the first and third figures is 81 ig.

ELEMENTS OLD 143

the hands of Hofmann into an even more exciting occupa
tion than the making of mauve. For in 1860 the liberation
movement under Garibaldi roused the enthusiasm and
sympathy of the youthful chemist to such a pitch that, like
many other Englishmen of that period, he went to Italy to
fight in the cause of Italian freedom, and did not return
home until the campaign was won.

Now it is well known that * all over Italy, they sing so
prettily,' and when young Newlands came back to chemistry
he seemed to have got it rather muddled up with music.
In 1866 this impetuous free-lance ventured to present, in
the sacred precincts of Burlington House, a paper to the
Chemical Society correlating his ideas on the two subjects.
Newlands had noted the surprising fact that if the elements
were arranged in the order of ascending atomic weights,
every successive eighth element was c a kind of repetition *
of the first. * In other words,' said Newlands, c members
of the same group of elements stand to each other in the
same relation as the extremities of one or more octaves in
music. This peculiar relationship I propose to provisionally
term the law of octaves.*

Besides splitting his infinitives, Newlands was handi
capped by the doleful fact that he did not know that several
notes on his chemical keyboard were missing. A number
of elements had not yet been discovered at that time, and
consequently, when Newlands put his fingers on two notes
an octave apart, he did not always get the expected
harmony. In order, therefore, to show the full value of
Newlands* idea, it will be better not to reproduce his
original octaves, but to amend them by omitting hydrogen
(the first note on the scale) and inserting certain elements
that have since been discovered. The first three * octaves,'
then, run thus :

Be B G N O F

Na Mg Al Si P S a
K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn

144 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

Looking at these octaves the chemist sees that elements of
a similar character, belonging to the same c family/ fall in
the same vertical column throughout. On the other hand,
if any octave is read horizontally, a regular and progressive
change in properties is observable. The most significant
change, from the purely chemical point of view, is in the
property called valence.

In an earlier chapter it has been noted that the carbon
atom can be directly linked to four other atoms, and chemists
therefore say that carbon is c quadrivalent ' or has a valency
of four. Now carbon, it will be seen on inspection, is the
fourth note in its octave. Examination of the keyboard
shows that lithium, sodium and potassium all possess a
valence of one. Beryllium, magnesium and calcium all
exhibit a valence of two. And so it goes on right through
the octaves, until at the end fluorine, chlorine and manganese
are reached, all of which show a maximum valence of
seven.

Here it must be stressed once more that Newlands did
not find it possible to work out the scheme given above so
harmoniously as it is now developed. He was already in
trouble in his first three octaves because of missing notes,
and when he came to the heavier elements the discords
which he produced were truly terrible. For this reason his
work did not obtain the recognition which it deserved at
once ; in fact, it was received with derision.

Burlington House fairly rocked with laughter on i March
1866, when young Newlands read his paper ; the dear old
Tories of the Chemical Society had not had such an enjoy
able evening for years. One Fellow humorously inquired
of Mr Newlands whether he had ever tried arranging the
dements alphabetically, in the order of their initial letters,
and then all Piccadilly knew that something had happened
to rouse the pundits from their wonted torpor. It was
finally agreed that the best interests of science would be
served if the article were buried in the archives of the society.
Twenty-one years later, however, the laugh was on New-

ELEMENTS OLD 145

lands* side when he was awarded the Davy Medal of the
Royal Society for his discovery.

This award arrived far too late, however, to save New-
lands for pure science. He had been too deeply discouraged
to do much further research on the elements ; he went instead
into chemical industry and spent the greater part of his
remaining years as a chemist in a sugar refinery, peering
into polarimeters and carrying out other necessary routine
work. 1 He died in if

The next * organiser 3 originated from a most unexpected
quarter Siberia. Sir William Ramsay relates that, in
1884, he attended a dinner in London in honour of Perkin,
where the following incident occurred :

I was very early at the dinner, and was putting off time,
looking at the names of people to be present, when a peculiar
foreigner, every hair of whose head acted in independence of
every other, 2 came up bowing. I said, * We are to have a good
attendance, I think ? ' He said, c I do not spik English.' I said,
* Vielleicht sprechen Sie Deutsch ? ' He replied, c Ja, ein wenig.
Ich bin Mendelejeff. 5 Well, we had twenty minutes or so before
anyone else turned up and we talked our mutual subject fairly
out. He is a nice sort of fellow but his German is not perfect.
He said he was raised in East Siberia and knew no Russian until
he was seventeen years old. I suppose he is a Kalmuck or one
of those outlandish creatures.

The outlandish creature was Dmitri Ivanovitch
Mendelejeff, born at Tobolsk on 27 January 1834 (Old Style).
His father was headmaster at the local high school, his mother
had Tartar blood in her veins. Dmitri was the youngest
of a large family, variously estimated as containing from
eleven to seventeen children. The uncertainty in their

1 The portrait of Newlands (facing page 140) is one taken in later life. It
is a pity that nobody knew when he was a young man that he had already
earned immortality.

* See the portrait facing p. 164, In this connection it may again be
remarked that photographers, unfortunately, did not flourish in Siberia in the
first h^f of the nineteenth century.

146 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

number may be due to the fact that their father gradually
went blind and had to resign his position shortly after
Dmitri's birth, while their mother was so busily engaged in
supplementing the small pension on which they had to
subsist by reopening and managing an old glass factory her
parents had built fifty years before that she never had time
to count them properly.

Her husband died of consumption and the glass works
was destroyed by fire, but still the heroic woman struggled
on. Tobolsk was then a place of banishment for political
exiles, and from one of these, who married his elder sister
Olga, Dmitri obtained his first interest in science. To enable
him to continue his studies at a university, his aged mother
travelled with him on the long and tedious journey to
Moscow to see if she could obtain him a scholarship. It
could not be done, he was * deficient in classics.' Nothing
daunted, on to St Petersburg she went, and there at last,
with the assistance of some of her husband's friends, she
succeeded in securing admission for him to the Central
Pedagogic Institute. Shortly thereafter, worn out by
overwork and self-sacrifice, she died.

Mendelejeff never forgot his debt to his mother. More
than thirty years after her death he dedicated to her his
great book on Solutions in the following lines :

This investigation is dedicated to the memory of a mother
by her youngest offspring. Conducting a factory, she could
educate him only by her own work. She instructed by example,
corrected with love, and in order to devote him to science she
left Siberia with him, spending thus her last resources and
strength. When dying, she said, c Refrain from illusions, insist
on work and not on words. Patiently search divine and scientific
truth.* She understood how often dialectical methods deceive,
how much there is still to be learned, and how, with the aid
of science without violence, with love but firmness, all superstition,
untruth, and error are removed, bringing in their stead the safety
of discovered truth, freedom for further development, general
welfare, and inward happiness. Dmitri MendelejefT regards as
sacred a mother's dying words. October, 1887.

ELEMENTS OLD 147

So eager was he to justify his mother's trust in him that
he ruined his health with excessive study. At graduation
he received a gold medal for all-round excellence, but his
doctors gave him only six months to live. He obtained a
teaching position in the Crimea the Russian Riviera and
the southern climate soon restored his strength. But the
Crimean War came and drove him to Odessa, and in 1856
he was back in St Petersburg, a lecturer in the University
at the early age of twenty-two.

In 1859 the Russian Ministry of Public Instruction
decided to send several young scientists to study abroad for
two years, and Mendelejeff was among the favoured few.
He worked in Paris and in Heidelberg, but with characteristic
eccentricity he did not do much practical research in the
University laboratories, he occupied himself instead mainly
with tabulating innumerable physical constants of the
elements and their compounds, securing data upon which
he was later to base his great discovery. He attended the
historic Karlsruhe Congress where Cannizzaro dispersed the
mist that had so long enshrouded atoms and molecules.
How Cannizzaro's ideas must have assisted in clarifying
his own speculations ! Another young chemist, a German
named Lothar Meyer, who also heard Cannizzaro, relates :
' It was as though scales fell from my eyes, doubt vanished
and was replaced by a feeling of peaceful certainty.' This
same Lothar Meyer came into more direct contact with
MendelejefF subsequently, as will appear in due course.

It was not c all work and no play ' for Dmitri, however,
throughout those golden years. During vacations he
tramped far and wide over Europe with one of his com
panions, Alexander Borodin, whose father was a Georgian
prince. In his diary he gives an amusing story of one of
their joint journeys into Italy :

We started with light baggage, one knapsack between two
of us ; we wore blouses and tried to pass ourselves off as artists,
which, in Italy, is always advantageous to the traveller's purse.

148 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

We bought ourselves linen en route, and when it became soiled
left it by way of tips to the waiters. In this manner we visited
Venice, Verona and Milan in the spring of 1860, and Genoa
and Rome in the autumn of the same year. On our first trip
we had an interesting adventure. Near Verona, our carriage
was visited by the Austrian police in search of an Italian prisoner
who had made his escape. Borodin's southern type attracted
the attention of the police, who believed they had found in him
the man they were seeking. They ransacked our luggage from
top to bottom and questioned us ; but they soon found we were
peaceable Russian students and thereupon left us alone. Scarcely
had we passed the Austrian frontier and entered the States of
Sardinia, when our travelling companions began to make much
of us, to embrace us, to cry * Ewiva ! ' and to sing at the top
of their voices. We then discovered that the prisoner was amongst
us and had passed unobserved. Thanks to the suspicions aroused
by Borodin's physiognomy, the prisoner had escaped the clutches
of Austria !

Did Dmitri ever meet a young volunteer named New-
lands during his travels in Italy ? It is scarcely likely, nor
did Italian music seem to make much impression upon him,
although he was always intensely interested in art. 1 Borodin,
however, was more susceptible. Not only did he become
a great organic chemist, he also became one of the greatest
of Russian composers. This e Sunday musician/ as he called
himself, since his scientific duties afforded him no leisure
during the week, wrote the symphonic poem, On the Steppes,
and the well-known opera, Prince Igor. Think of it one of the
most wonderful operas ever written was written by a c mere
chemist ' in his spare time !

Returning to Russia, Mendelejeff obtained his doctor's
degree without any difficulty, and was appointed Professor
of Chemistry in the Technological Institute at St Petersburg. 2
In 1866 he was promoted to the Chair of General Chemistry

1 In Ms later years, indeed, his first marriage having proved a failure,
he feH in love with a beautiful young Cossack artist with the picturesque
name of Anna Popova, and from his second marriage romance never vanished.

* In this institute also the author spent several months as a research student,
a few years after MendelejefPs death.

ELEMENTS OLD 149

in the University itself. His lectures there are still re
membered. His predecessor had made chemistry c a collation
of recipes/ but every student who listened to Mendelejeff
and hundreds crowded to hear him was made to perceive
that it was a living science. Prince Kropotkin, later the
famous revolutionary, has said : c For me it was a revelation,
a beautiful improvisation, a stimulant to the intellect which
left deep traces on my development/ No wonder he found
it so, for in those first years as a professor Mendelejeff was
putting the finishing strokes on his great work on which he
had been engaged for over a decade, The Periodic System
of the Elements.

This mammoth conception is now a familiar feature of all
chemistry textbooks. In its strict scientific form, however,
it is rather too abstruse to allow the layman to appreciate
its beauties. For that reason an attempt will be made here
to explain its main points by means of an analogy. We shall
suppose that we are trying to accommodate all our chemical
elements in a rational manner in a huge apartment-house
which, in honour of its original architect, we shall name
Mendelejeff Court. A cross-section of Mendelejeff Court is
shown in the diagram on page 150. Only its salient details
can be discussed here ; for a fuller treatment the reader is
referred to the author's earlier volume, At Home among the
Atoms.

According to this diagram there are eight storeys above
the street level. 1 Most of the floors contain six rooms, but
towards the top the building regulations compel us to step
back a little. These six rooms we may label, for convenience,
starting from the left, A, B, G, D, E and F. A, B and F
are single rooms ; G, D and E are double rooms. The three
roof bungalows are each sufficiently commodious to house
three elements.

The elements are found to occupy Mendelejeff Court,

1 Will the reader please pretend, for the present, that the basement is
invisible ?

A B

Ni 58-7
058-9
Fe 55-8

Pd 106-7
Rh 102-8
Ru xoi'7

Pt 195-2
Ir 193-1
Os 191-5

fM

SE
(\

F
*9

a

35-5

Br
79'9

I
126-9

At

2IO

Mn
55

Tc
99

Re
186-3

\ v

16

S
32

Se
79

Te
1275

Po

210

Cr

52

Mo
96

vv

184

U
238

N
14

P
3i

As
75

Sb

12 I -8

Bi
209

V
5i

Nb
93

Ta
180-9

Pa
231

C

12

Si
28

Ge
72-6

Sn
118-7

Pb
207-2

Ti
48

Zr

9i

Hf
178-6

Th
232

B
10-8

Al
27

Ga

69-7

In
114-8

Tl
204-4

Sc
45

Y
89

La 138-9
and 14
others

Ac
227

Be
9

Mg
24-3

Zn

65-4

Cd

112-4

Hg
200-6

Ga

40

Sr
87-6

Ba
137-4

Ra

226

Gu

63*6

Ag
107-9

Au
I97-2

Li
6-9

Na
23

K
39'i

Rb
85-4

Gs

132-8

Fr
223

He

4

Ne

20-2

A
39-9

Kr
83*7

Xe
I3I-3

Rn

222

ROOF
(Maximum valence -j-8)

SEVENTH FLOOR
(Valence +7 or i)

SIXTH FLOOR
(Valence -f-6 or 2)

FIFTH FLOOR
(Valence +5 or 3)

FOURTH FLOOR
(Valence +4 or 4)

THIRD FLOOR

(Valence +3)

SECOND FLOOR

(Valence -f-2)

FIRST FLOOR
(Valence +i)

BASEMENT
(Valence o)

D E F

FIG. 1 8 Mendelejeff Court

150

ELEMENTS OLD 15!

in order of increasing atomic weights, 1 as follows. Starting
with the first note of Newlands* first octave, lithium, in
Room A on the first floor, we proceed upwards until we
reach the top of the building with fluorine, the last note of
the octave. Rooms B and the c lower berths 3 on the left-
hand side of Rooms C are successively filled in exactly the
same way. But now Mendelejeff skilfully avoids the diffi
culties that baffled Newlands in harmonising the heavier
elements. His first two series of seven elements, tenanting
Rooms A and B, are followed by series not of seven, but
of seventeen. Was it his own early environment he may,
recollect, have been the youngest of seventeen children
that suggested this particular number to him? At any
rate, there they are, three series of seventeen elements, each
split up into two sets of seven on the left and right sides
of Rooms C, D and E on the seven main floors, with an
intermediate set of three in each of the roof bungalows.
When Rooms F, finally, are reached, the sixth series seems
to come to a stop with uranium, the element of highest-
known atomic weight occurring naturally. 2

Having now completed our tour of the apartment-house,
we are ready to admire the amazingly apt way in which its
occupants have been arranged. Natural families of elements
like the alkali metals (lithium, sodium, etc.) and the
halogens (fluorine, chlorine, etc.) all live in adjoining rooms
on the same level. If you want to visit any particular element
you need only to know its valence and you then know exactly
on what floor to find it It is true that there are two families
in all dwelling on each floor, and that sometimes these two
families have little in common save valence, but this fact
is easily indicated by assigning them lower and upper berths

1 Approximate values for the atomic weights are included under the
symbols for the different elements in the diagram on p. 150.

* Recent work (see pages 173-9) has resulted in the artificial production
from uranium of no fewer than six 4 transuranic elements/ which have been
named neptunium, plutonium, americium, curium, berkelium and californium.
Uranium appears, indeed, to start a second series of elements similar to the
rare earths (pages 157-6).

152 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

respectively, as in the diagram on page 150. The groups of
three renting the roof bungalows are all elements of closely
similar character, and compounds are known in which they
exhibit their maximum valence of eight.

Until recently two available places in the apartment-
house were vacant, the upper berth in Room E on the
seventh floor, and Room F on the first floor. These repre
sented a halogen and an alkali metal, respectively, that still
awaited discovery. 1 Even although we could not observe
these elements personally, we knew precisely, neverthe
less, what they were like in advance of their discovery.
Mendelejeff had supplied us with all their identification
marks.

* How can this be so ? ' you may well ask. The mystery
is easily explained. When Mendelejeff Court was first
erected, it was not nearly so full as it is now : there were
plenty of elements yet unknown in 1869. Its architect,
very wisely, did not insist on renting the rooms in strict
rotation. When he found, as he ascended the list of atomic
weights, that an element did not agree with its neighbours
in the room to which it was first assigned, he boldly moved
it one or two floors higher, until it did find a congenial
environment. This left him, of course, with quite a
number of c blanks, 5 and here it was that Mendelejeff
took the opportunity of displaying his supreme gift of
prophecy.

* If I determine all the properties of the known members
of a family in detail/ he said, c I can predict therefrom the
properties of any unknown member.' Let us demonstrate
how his forecast was vindicated in one particular case out
of many. There used to be a gap in the carbon family, the
element that should occupy the upper berth in Room G on
the fourth floor being ' lost, stolen or strayed.' Mendelejeff
sent out a general SOS for this missing element, which
he called eka-silicon, in 1871. In 1886 the German chemist

1 Their places are now occupied by astatine and francium.

ELEMENTS OLD 153

Winkler discovered it, and named it germanium. The almost
incredible accuracy of MendelejefFs anticipation of truth is
shown in the following table :

MenddejefPs Winkler>s
Eka-silicon Germanium
(1871) (1886)

Atomic weight 72 72*6

Density ....... 5.5 5 . 4?

Colour ....... dirty grey greyish white

Density of oxide 4-7 4*703

Boiling-point of chloride . . . below 1 00 86

Density of chloride .... 1-9 1-887

Boiling-point of ethide . . . 160 160

Density of ethide ..... 0*96 nearly i

Imperfect as our analysis of the apartment-house has
been, it will already be evident to the reader that the Periodic
Law of Mendelejeff represents a great advance beyond New-
lands 5 Law of Octaves. Classification of the elements into
families was so successful that its acceptance by chemists
was immediate and almost universal. Some timid souls did
doubt for a time the audacious predictions regarding missing
elements, but the confirmation of those predictions finally
convinced even the most sceptical.

That the time was ripe, indeed, for the enunciation of
such a law was shown by the fact that Mendelejeff, who
had been working up to it gradually for years, was nearly
anticipated after all. Lothar Meyer, whom we encountered
at Karlsruhe in 1860, had also been engaged upon the same
general problem, and in December 1869 he published a
c periodic system ' which progressed, in certain respects, even
beyond that originally put forward by Mendelejeff in the
previous March. Mendelejeff freely acknowledged his in
debtedness to Lothar Meyer for the full development of his
principles ; he also admitted that Newlands and others had
foreshadowed the Periodic Law. But, as he himself once
stated :

154 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

No law of nature, however general, has been established all
at once ; its recognition has always been preceded by many
presentiments. The establishment of a law, moreover, does not
take place when the first thought of it takes form, or even when
its significance is recognised, but only when it has been confirmed
by the results of experiment. The man of science must consider
these results as the only proof of the correctness of his conjectures
and opinions.

In agreement with this judgment, the scientific world has
unanimously given the primary credit for the classification
of the elements to Dmitri Ivanovitch Mendelejeff.

"His later career may be described briefly. His own
research work, outside his one great discovery, was not of
primary significance. It is true that he devoted an enormous
amount of time to the study of solutions, but Van 't Hoff
outdistanced him ; he never got beyond the point of con
sidering solutions as c definite chemical compounds in a state
of partial dissociation.' As a teacher, however, he was out
standing. Both he and Borodin, almost alone among
Russians at that time, dared to recognise the injustice done
to women by withholding university privileges from them,
and risked provoking the wrath of the Government by giving
gratuitous instructions to classes of ladies as early as 1870.
He also stood up frequently to protect his men students
against Gzarist interference. He received little thanks
therefor the liberals regarded him as a * rigid monarchist *
while the conservatives considered him a fi subversive
revolutionary * ; he himself said that he was * a peaceable
evolutionist/

In 1890 an insurrection broke out in Poland, and there
were serious sympathetic disturbances in all the Russian
universities. MendelejefF pacified his own students by
promising to present their petition to the Minister of Educa
tion ; he was sharply reprimanded by the authorities for
not minding his own business. Deeply insulted, he resigned
from his chair at the University, but three years later he was

ELEMENTS OLD 155

appointed Director of the Bureau of Weights and Measures,
a post which he retained until his death on 20 January
1907 (Old Style).

He filled this Bureau of Weights and Measures, as far
as possible, with women employees ; their position must
often have been rather difficult. For Mendelejeff, through
out his life, remained at heart a peasant he always travelled
third-class in order to engage in intimate conversations with
the c common people ' on the trains and he possessed the
Russian peasant's ready flow of profanity. When roused, he
not only called a spade an adjectival shovel, he addressed
it in terms that were calculated to raise its temperature to
red heat. The women in his office either had to stuff
their ears with cotton-wool or pretend to be conveniently
deaf.

When MendelejefF was presented at court to Czar
Alexander III, His Majesty was very curious to know
whether he would have his hair cut for the occasion. He
did not ; it was his habit to cut his hair once a year in
spring, when the warm weather set in, and the shearing
season had not yet arrived.

Numberless stories exist illustrating MendelejefPs eccen
tric personality. Most of them may be based on fact, but
some are certainly apocryphal. It has been told, for example,
how in 1889, when he was awarded by the Chemical Society
of London its highest distinction, the Faraday Medal, he
was handed after the delivery of his lecture a small silk
purse worked in the Russian national colours and containing
the customary honorarium. c Dramatically he tumbled the
sovereigns out on the table, declaring that nothing would
induce him to accept money from a Society which had paid
him the high compliment of inviting him to do honour to
the memory of the immortal Faraday/ It is a good story,
and represents no doubt exactly what Mendelejeff might
have done under the circumstances. Unfortunately, how
ever, the records of the Chemical Society reveal that
MendelejefF received an urgent recall to Russia before the

156 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

lecture was delivered and that, in his absence, a translation
was read by the secretary.

His services to science were universally acknowledged
abroad, but the Imperial Academy of Sciences of St Peters
burg never elected him to its membership. In 1934, never
theless, the Soviet Government issued a special series of
postage stamps to commemorate the centenary of his birth.

As with Van J t Hoff, Byron was his literary hero. His
perpetual youthfulness is shown by the fact that Fenimore
Cooper and Jules Verne were his favourites in fiction. e Of
all things in life/ he said, c I love nothing more than to have
my children around me.' On the day of his death he sat
listening to the reading of Jules Verne's Journey to the North
Pole. His soul went on a longer journey, but his body was
buried in the Wolkowo Cemetery beside the body of his
beloved mother.

During the last years of MendelejefPs life, strange events
were occurring at Mendelejeff Court. Recent research had
resulted in much excavation work being carried out in the
street outside the apartment-house, and suddenly it was
discovered that Mendelejeff Court possessed a basement.
Not only was there a basement, but there was a whole family
of elements dwelling therein, elements whose existence in
this world had hitherto been entirely unsuspected, although
they are present in the very air that we breathe. They had
escaped recognition previously only because of their exclusive
habits. In accordance with their lowly position under
the ground-level, they exhibit a valence of zero ; that is,
they do not form compounds with any other elements
at all.

How these hermit elements the inert gases of the
atmosphere were brought to the light of day by Sir William
Ramsay is an entrancing story, but too long to be told here,
Some of them have since been made to work for their living.
Hdfium, for instance, has been extensively employed in
airships, neon is used in electric signs and argon in electric

ELEMENTS OLD 157

lamp bulbs (page 217). Radon, or radium emanation, is of
service in hospitals in the treatment of superficial cancerous
growths.

The discovery of the inert gases caused chemists to
concentrate their attention upon MendelejefF Court anew,
and several deficiencies came up for consideration. After
all, apartment-houses grow out of date very quickly, and
Mendelejeff Court, admirably -as it functioned during the
nineteenth century, was clearly getting too antiquated for
twentieth-century standards. One point may already have
struck the reader children are not permitted within its
portals. Poor little hydrogen, the lightest of the elements,
finds no place at all to lay its head !

A still more scandalous state of affairs confronts us as
soon as we look in on lanthanum in Room E on the third
floor. Lanthanum, which ought to occupy this double room
with thallium alone, has invited no fewer than fourteen
companions to share its quarters, and all these elements are
cooped up in one bunk together ! Now this is a situation
which is really beyond a joke and it cannot be allowed to
exist indefinitely. Chemists have made innumerable efforts
to find alternative accommodation for these fourteen extra
elements in Mendelejeff Court, but they simply refuse to fit
into the general system.

These metals of the rare earths, as they are called, have
really been a source of serious annoyance ever since the
periodic system was introduced. Everywhere else through
out the list we have a uniform change in valence and chemical
properties as we proceed from one element to another.
Suddenly, and for no apparent reason, we find fifteen
elements with beautiful names lanthanum, cerium, praseo
dymium, neodymium, promethium, samarium, europium,
gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, holmium, erbium, thul
ium, ytterbium and lutecium which all prefer to exhibit
a valence of three. They occur all together in nature,
notably in the monazite sands of North Carolina, Brazil and
Travancore. They can be separated one from another only

158 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

with great storm and strife, by taking advantage of slight
differences in the solubilities of corresponding salts.

What can we do with these rare earth elements ? They
cannot be permitted to impose permanently upon the kind
nature of lanthanum, since the Board of Health will not
tolerate such chronic overcrowding for ever. They cannot
be accommodated elsewhere in Mendelejeff Court. There
is no proper place for them, and they would disturb the
harmony of the elements which follow. Chemists in the
past have usually done one of two things. Either they have,
like the ostrich, shut their eyes to the fourteen superfluous
elements and pretended that they were not there, or they
have shunted them off into a shed outside of the main build
ing and left them to their own devices.

Now this is manifestly unjust, since, after all, the rare
earth metals are honest-to-goodness elements ; they have
atomic weights and everything. If, then, we cannot find
suitable places for them in Mendelejeff Court, and if we
do not want to split our chemical community into two
sections, what other alternative can we devise? The only
course is to evacuate Mendelejeff Court and move our
chemical community out of the cruel city into the calm and
peaceful open spaces where there will be ample room for
everybody and no objection will be raised to children.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

* Newlands Obituary Notice.' Nature,

c MendelejefF Memorial Lecture of the Chemical Society.' Sir
William Tilden, 1909

Eminent Chemists of ow Time. B. Harrow, 1920

Crucibles* B. Jaffe, 1930

M Home among the Atoms. J. Kendall, 1929

CHAPTER VII
AND ELEMENTS NEW

THE transfer of the elements to more commodious quarters
in a modern Garden City was mainly due to the work of
two young men Niels Bohr and Henry Moseley. Niels Bohr,
happily, is still active in scientific research in his native city
of Copenhagen, and in his honour we shall name our Garden
City c Bohrville.' Harry Moseley, alas, was cut off in the
first flower of youth.

In 1912 these two young men were both engaged in
research in the laboratory of Lord Rutherford at Manchester
University. Rutherford had just succeeded, as a result of
recent work in radioactivity, in reviving Proufs old hypo
thesis of a common basis for the atoms of all the elements in
a modified form. Mendelejeff, strangely enough, had always
frowned upon this logical extension of his classification of the
elements into families ; he seems to have regarded specula
tion in this direction as a kind of abuse of the periodic system.
In his Faraday Lecture he went so far as to state that any
theory of the compound character of the elements and the
existence of primordial matter must be classed among mere
Utopias. But the study of the radioactive elements, to which
we shall refer in greater detail later, proved that trans
mutation from one element to another could occur in
nature, and one of the common products of radioactive
disintegrations had been identified with Sir J. J, Thomson's
electron, or unit of negative electricity, a particle with a mass
only i part in 1,850 that of an atom of hydrogen. To this
unit Rutherford added in 1911 the proton, or unit of positive
electricity. The first systematic c picture ' of the atom, as
formulated by Rutherford, showed it as consisting of a
minute central nucleus, positively charged, surrounded by
planetary electrons. The nucleus, containing all the protons,

159

I GO GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

is responsible for practically the entire mass of the atom ;
the external electrons, being set at relatively large distances
from the nucleus, are responsible for practically all its
volume* Only in radioactive transformations does the nucleus
change ; ordinary chemical reactions affect merely the
external electrons.

Bohr's business was to untangle the exterior electrons ;
Mosele/s to unveil the heart of the atom. Before, however,
their work is described, it will be well to anticipate one
fundamental difficulty which was not actually cleared up
until later.

If the simplest atom, the hydrogen atom, comprises a
single proton as a nucleus and a single external electron, 1
and if all other atoms are built up of more complex aggregates
of protons and electrons, how can it happen that all atomic
weights are not exact multiples of that of hydrogen ? This
was the rock upon which the old hypothesis of Prout had
split long before.

A perfectly satisfactory solution of this difficulty was
obtained by Francis Aston, Fellow of Trinity College,
Cambridge, a young research worker in the laboratory of
Sir J. J. Thomson. Hydrogen is not, after all, the proper
basis to employ, since the mass of the hydrogen atom is
altered by an approximately constant fraction when it is
incorporated into heavier atoms, as will be developed at
the end of this chapter. It is therefore fortunate that chemists,
after Prout's hypothesis was discarded in 1860, gradually
switched over, purely for convenience, to oxygen = 16 as a
standard. For an extraordinary proportion of atomic weights,
on the basis O = 16 (or H = 1-0078), fall so close to being
integral that the nearest round numbers are exact enough
for ordinary use. The odds are billions to one against such
an agglomeration occurring merely by chance. There are
still some flagrant exceptions, such as chlorine 35-457, but

1 To illustrate the minuteness of the nucleus, it may be noted that if the
liydrogen atom were expanded to the size of the Wembley Stadium, the
nucleus would correspond to a golf ball placed at its centre.

AND ELEMENTS NEW l6l

Aston succeeded in proving that all such elements with
eccentric atomic weights consist of mixtures of distinct
types of atoms, called isotopes. Thus there are two kinds of
chlorine, one kind with atomic "mass 35, the other kind with
atomic mass 37. The only difference between them is that
the heavier kind contains two additional proton-electron
pairs (or neutrons., as they were subsequently termed) packed
into its minute nucleus. And since chemical properties
depend only upon the number and arrangement of the

FT

Ti

1

V

1 1

Cr

1 1

Mn

1 1

Fe

Co

1 1

Ni

1 1

Cu

V m K Series of X-rav soectra f diagrammatic only)

external electrons, and these are the same in both cases, the
two kinds of chlorine are chemically identical.

Now we can return to Moseley, who was investigating
the X-rays obtained when different elements are used as
the target for a stream of electrons. His experimental
technique is too complicated to be described here ; it will
be sufficient to mention the fact that he found, using a large
rock-salt crystal as an * analyser,' that different elements
gave different X-ray spectra. Some of the results for a
sample series of successive elements, from titanium to copper,
are shown diagrammatically in Fig. 19. Theoretically the
wave-lengths of the lines obtained with any element should
depend, in a simple way, upon the number of free protons
in the nucleus of its atom. On comparing the spectra of

1 62 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

different elements, Moseley discovered now the great law
of atomic numbers.

Every reader has probably seen, at some time or another,
a company of soldiers lined up on parade, calling out their
numbers at the command of their sergeant-major. Through
Moseley's work we can now line up the elements in a similar
way and make each call out its c atomic number ' the
number of free protons in its atomic nucleus. The discipline
is perfect : i, 2, 3, 4, etc., come the successive cries up to
92 ! Every element, including the rare earth elements, thus shows
its right to occupy its own private house with its own parti
cular number in our new Garden City.

The planning of this Garden City was left for Bohr.
Bohr showed that the exterior electrons could be pictured
as moving around the nucleus of the atom in orbits of
different classes. The maximum number of electrons in each
class is limited as follows : First class 2, Second class 8,
Third class 18, Fourth class 32. 1 But the outermost class in
any atom is also limited to a maximum of 8 electrons, and
the next to outermost to 18. With these rules in mind, Bohr-
ville was built. The result is shown in the plan on page 163.

Bohrville spreads out over the countryside in a fan-
shaped fashion, and contains seven avenues of varying lengths,
the last house in each avenue being tenanted by an inert
gas. Gross-tracks, indicated by straight lines, connect
elements in different avenues that have obvious family
relationships. In what complete harmony the elements all
exist, however, in beautiful Bohrville is a matter which
cannot be developed in these pages ; space considerations
prohibit the attempt. The reader who desires details is
referred once more to the author's book/ At Home among
ike Atoms*

Sergeant Moseley had called each element's number,
but the dread sergeant, Death, was about to call his own.

1 Note that these numbers follow the mathematical series 2 X i* ; 2 X 2* 5
2 x 3* ; 2 X 4*.

AND ELEMENTS NEW

163

In August 1914, at the outbreak of World War I, the
young scientist, whose one brilliant research had already
made him famous at the age of twenty-six, was in Australia
attending the Meeting of the British Association for the

n

III

IV

VI

VII

18

18

32

FIG. 20 Plan of Bohrville

Advancement of Science. As soon as its sessions were con
cluded, he hurried home to enlist. He had gone through Eton
and Oxford when he was only four he had lost his father,
who had been professor of anatomy at the latter so he was
given a commission in the Royal Engineers. In June 1915
his unit was sent to the Dardanelles, and in the trenches
there, two months later, he was shot through the brain by

164 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

a Turkish sniper while engaged in signalling operations.
Orders for his recall from active service to participate in
important scientific war work at home were actually on
their way at the time of his death.

Professor R. A. Millikan, himself a Nobel Prize winner,
has said in this connection : * Had the European War no
other result than the snuffing out of his young life, that alone
would make it one of the most hideous and irreparable crimes
In history. 5 How many other Moseleys, however, who were
not even given the opportunity to complete one research,
that holocaust must have included among its victims !
Edwin H. Lewis has mourned his loss in The Ballad ofRyerson
as, follows :

The beat of the harp is broken, the heart of the gleeman is fain
To call him back from the grave and rebuild the shattered brain
Of Moseley dead in the trenches, Harry Moseley dead by the sea,
Balder slain by the blindman there in Gallipoli.

Beyond the violet seek him, for there in the dark he dwells,
Holding the crystal lattice to cast the shadow that tells
How the heart of the atom thickens, ready to burst into flower,
Loosing the bands of Orion with heavenly heat and power.

He numbers the charge on the centre for each of the elements
That we named for gods and demons, colors and tastes and scents,
And he hears the hum of the lead that burned through his brain like fire
Change to the hum of an engine, the song of the sun-grain choir.

Now, if they slay the dreamers and the riches the dreamers gave,
They shall get them back to the benches and be as the galley slaves.

It now becomes necessary to turn back the pages of
history a little in order to discuss the important topic of
radioactivity. The greatest of all the great names connected
with this topic is undoubtedly the name of Marie Sklodovska
better known to the world in general as Madame Curie.

Marie Sklodovska was born in Warsaw on 7 November
1867 ; Madame Curie died in France on 4 July 1934.
Between those two dates what a wonderful life-work lies !

AND ELEMENTS NEW 165

So lofty and yet so retiring was the personality, so romantic
the career, and so stupendous the scientific achievements of
our first young heroine that, though she has been dead only
a few years, she has already passed into a legend.

Her biographers have told us how the old prophet
Mendelejeff met her as a young girl in Warsaw her father
taught physics in a secondary school in that city and
made another of his unerring predictions : Here is the
first woman chemist of the future ! ' They have related
how she was forced to fly from Poland owing to her connec
tion with revolutionary activities against the hated Russian
Government, how she starved in a Paris garret, and how,
a feminine Faraday, she met her expenses at the Sorbonne
by washing bottles and preparing the laboratory furnace.
How far these and dozens of similar stories are true is a
question that can never be absolutely settled. Many of
them are discredited in the authoritative biography (1937)
written by her younger daughter, who has not included
a single anecdote of which she is not sure, but some first
hand reminiscences of early friends may quite well have
an authentic basis. Here her hard climb to immortality
will be described in barest outline ; for fuller details Eve
Curie's book (translated into English by Vincent Sheean)
should be consulted.

A girl of eighteen, anxious to complete her own educa
tion abroad, Marie took a position for three monotonous
years as a governess in order to help to support her elder
sister, Bronya, who was working for a medical degree in
Paris. The son of the house fell in love with her, but her
employer (who had herself been a governess and married
under similar circumstances) squelched the budding romance.
What a treasure she rejected ! At last Marie found that her
meagre savings sufficed to justify her too in making the
journey to Paris, and she joined her sister there in 1891.
It was to this same sister that she wrote more than forty
years later : c Believe me, family solidarity is, after all, the
only good thing/

(969) IS

i66

GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

Yet when she found that the distance of her sister's
apartment from the Sorbonne was handicapping her in her
studies, she did not hesitate to go and live in the Latin
Quarter alone on 100 francs a month. ' Work ! work !
work ! * was her watchword for four heroic years, at the end
of which she had reached the stage of starting scientific
research under Professor Lippmann. Then she married
Pierre Curie, a brilliant but poorly paid instructor in physics.

A brief e bicycle honeymoon ' the happy couple were
both ardent cyclists then back to research ; after the birth
of a daughter, Irene, back to research once more. By the
end of 1897 all preliminary hurdles had been passed and
Marie was ready to prepare for the final step the disserta
tion for her doctor's degree. This work was destined to
raise her out of obscurity for ever, for in seeking her doctorate
she discovered radium.

The year before, Henri Becquerel, a Paris professor, had
observed quite accidentally that compounds of uranium
the element with the highest atomic number, 92, existent
in minute quantity in the pitchblende deposits of Bohemia
emit a strange radiation. This radiation resembles X-rays
in its ability to penetrate solid objects. It is also electrical
in its nature, for when a salt of uranium is brought near
the knob of an electrometer, the gold leaves of which have
been caused to separate by charging
them with electricity, the leaves are
rapidly discharged. Marie decided to
make a general investigation of this
peculiar radiation the research problem
for her doctor's thesis. The only
room available for her use was a damp
unheated lumber-room in the School
of Physics, but that did not discourage
the frail young woman.
Several points of great interest soon emerged. Uranium
compounds are not alone in emitting these spontaneous rays.

FIG. 21 Electrometer

AND ELEMENTS NEW 167

thorium compounds do so also to a lesser degree. Further
more, while the activity of all salts of uranium is exactly
proportional to their uranium content, the pitchblende from
which uranium is extracted is several times as active as the
uranium itself. Marie's mind leaped instinctively to the
correct conclusion from this last observation. All known
chemical elements, except uranium and thorium, are in
active. Pitchblende must contain therefore, in amount so
small as to have escaped notice hitherto, one or more new
elements, tremendously more radioactive than uranium
itself.

At this stage it became obvious that the continuation of
the research was to be not only of intense importance, but
also exceedingly laborious. Pierre immediately abandoned
his own investigations and joined in the quest. So began
a collaboration which was broken only by death. By patient
elimination of inactive groups of elements, the abnormal
radioactivity of the pitchblende was finally found to be
concentrated in two distinct fractions. In July 1898 it was
possible to announce the discovery of one new element ;
Marie named it polonium after her loved homeland. In
December of the same year a second and still more important
communication was made to the Academy of Sciences, a few
sentences from which follow :

The various reasons we have just enumerated lead us to
believe that the new radioactive substance contains a new
element to which we propose to give the name of RADIUM.

The new radioactive substance certainly contains a very large
proportion of barium ; in spite of that, its radioactivity is con
siderable. The radioactivity of radium itself, therefore, must
be enormous.

Radium had been { discovered/ but four years 9 hard
labour was yet required to isolate it pure in sufficient quantity
to determine its atomic weight and establish to the in
credulous its definite claim to the title of element. The
Austrian Government donated a ton of pitchblende residues,

1 68 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG- CHEMISTS

and in a dilapidated wooden shack, an abandoned shed with
leaky roof and no floor, the couple toiled through summer
heat and winter snow until in 1902 Marie at last succeeded
in obtaining a few grains of e chemically pure * radium
chloride, more than a million times as active as the uranium
salt, from which the atomic weight of the element, 225,
was determined.

On 25 June 1903, finally, Marie appeared before the
examining committee at the Sorbonne for her doctor's
degree. She was more fortunate than Arrhenius. The room
was packed with eager spectators, and at the end of the
formal examination the president, her old professor, Lipp-
mann, amplified the usual statement : e The University of
Paris accords you the title of Doctor of Physical Science with
honour,' by adding the words, ' and in the name of the
jury, Madame, I wish to express to you all our congratula
tions.'

In the same year Pierre and Marie Curie, conjointly with
Professor Becquerel, were awarded that supreme scientific
distinction, the Nobel Prize, for their extraordinary work
in common on the Becquerel rays.'

The story of Madame Curie's life must now be interrupted
to explain, very briefly, the main phenomena of radio
activity.

The elements that are, naturally, significantly radioactive
are all elements of very high atomic number. In their atoms
the congestion of protons and neutrons within the tightly
packed nucleus has evidently reached the point where the
aggregate has become unstable, and ever so often depend
ing on the particular element concerned particles are
ejected. Two kinds of particles may be mentioned helium
nuclei (alpha-rays) and electrons (beta-rays). Uranium
atoms disintegrate very rarely ; the half-period of the
element the time that will have elapsed before half of a
given sample has broken up is nearly 5,000,000,000 years.
After several successive disintegrations, uranium is converted

AND ELEMENTS NEW 169

into radium ; hence all uranium ores have a very minute
radium content. The half-period of radium, however, is
much shorter, only 1,690 years, and the first product of its
disintegration is a gas, radon or radium emanation. This
also breaks up very rapidly its half-period is less than four
days and after another long series of disintegrations a stable
product is finally obtained lead.

The rate of any particular disintegration may be accur
ately measured in various ways. For example, if a sample
of a radium salt is placed near a screen covered with zinc
sulphide, the impact of each helium nucleus on the screen
produces a faint flash of light. This is the principle of
Grookes's spinthariscope (Fig. 22). By observing the screen
G through a lens A in a dark
room, the scintillations are magni
fied, and the total number of
radium atoms disintegrating per
second from a sample of a radium

salt placed at B can be readily FIG. 22 Crookes' Spin-

_ f , A . ' thariscope

calculated. A much more con
venient and accurate method of detecting and recording
the * splitting * of individual atoms, however,, is afforded
by the Geiger counter.

This instrument consists essentially of an ionising chamber
a space between two parallel plates charged at a high
potential difference where the entrance of a single alpha-
particle is sufficient to ionise the air between the plates and
to induce a momentary spark to pass. The passage of a
spark can, with the assistance of amplifiers, be effectively
indicated by any one of several devices by the production
of peaks upon a Hne of light in a television tube, by c crackles *
from a loud-speaker, or finally, most conveniently of all, by
a mechanical system of numbered lamps connected with
a post-office counter. The handiness and adaptability of the
Geiger counter has made it, indeed, an invaluable piece
of apparatus in the quantitative study of radioactive dis
integrations.

I7O GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

The Importance of such study, both from the theoretical
and from the practical point of view, cannot be entered
into in detail here. It will be enough to mention one fact
familiar to all the application of radium in the treatment
of diseases, and particularly its use in the fight against
cancer.

On 19 April 1906 disaster struck the Curie household.
Pierre, crossing a crowded Paris street, was run over by
a heavy wagon and killed instantly. He had been promoted
to a professorship only two years before ; France was almost
the last country in the world to recognise his genius. Neither
he nor Marie ever entertained any thought of capitalising
their great discovery; like Davy they left it free for the use
of humanity. Marie had lost her husband ; the world had
lost a great scientist.

The day after Pierre's funeral the French Government
officially proposed to award his widow and children a
national pension. Marie refused ; heartbroken she might
be, but she was still prepared to earn her own living. And
earn it she did, for she was appointed to succeed her husband
in his chair. A huge crowd gathered to listen to the first
lecture delivered by the first woman professor the Sorbonne
had ever seen. 1 Reporters, society people, all Paris besieged
the secretary's office for c invitation cards/ but Marie's mind
was only on her students. Without a word of introduction,
she resumed the course at the precise sentence where Pierre
had left off.

The years that followed were more years of hard work
in the service of science. In 1910, duplicating the method
used by Davy in his Capital Experiment ! she was the first to
prepare metallic radium. As MendelejefT might have pre
dicted from its position in the periodic system, its properties

* Several biographers state that the President of France and Mme Fallieres,
King Carlos and Queen Amelia of Portugal, Lord Kelvin, Sir William Ramsay
and Sir Oliver Lodge were * among those present.* Mile ve Curie, however,
makes no mention of any of these notabilities.

AND ELEMENTS NEW 171

proved to be those of a metal in the barium family. The
Academy of Sciences, by one vote, refused to admit her to
its hallowed membership, but in 1911 she again received
a Nobel Prize the only person in history to be honoured
by a second award.

Her old shed was demolished, and a palatial * Institute
of Radium/ sponsored by the University and the Pasteur
Institute, was ready for her occupation in July 1914. The
war came ; she developed a mobile radiological service for
the treatment of the wounded and she herself drove one of
the twenty c little Curies,' as her specially equipped cars were
called. Trained manipulators were lacking, so with the
assistance of her daughter Irene she conducted a course of
instruction in radiology at the Radium Institute. In the
last year of the war she welcomed to her laboratory twenty
soldiers from the American Expeditionary Force as pupils
in this course.

It was two years after the armistice before she was free
to return to research, happy that her native Poland was
now also free from oppressors. In December 1920 she wrote
to her brother Joseph : * It is true that our country has paid
dearly for this happiness, and that it will have to pay again.
But like you, I have faith in the future/ Paderewski,
Poland's pianist-premier, had been a friend of Marie and
her sister Bronya in their old student days. In 1925 an
Institute of Radium was erected in Warsaw, and Marie laid
its corner-stone.

Years of overstrain and excessive exposure to the rays
of radium had sapped her strength, yet she continued to
devote herself to the duties of her own institute, and to the
promotion of research in radioactivity throughout the world,
until she died in harness. Though she would have preferred
to remain in seclusion, she was forced to become a public
personage. She made a trip to the United States, in the
course of which she was presented with a gramme of radium,
subscribed for by the women of America, rich and poor.
Her picture, and that of her husband, appeared on the

172 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

postage stamps of many nations. Her laboratory was always
thronged with eager students j between 1919 and 1934 the
total of scientific papers emanating therefrom was 483. With
what joy must she have watched her daughter Irene following
directly in her footsteps and developing into c the second
woman scientist in the world ' ! What poignant memories
must have been evoked in 1926, when Irene announced her
engagement to Frederic JoKot, one of the most brilliant
research workers at the Institute of Radium ! Had she lived
only eighteen months longer she would have seen history
repeat itself when Frederic Joliot and Irne Joliot-Gurie were
awarded the Nobel Prize for their joint work in the field of
* induced radioactivity/

It has been noted, earlier, that only the atoms of the
elements of highest atomic number are naturally unstable.
Lord Rutherford, however, discovered in 1919 that the
atoms of certain lighter elements may be disintegrated arti
ficially by bombarding them with the swiftly moving alpha-
particles ejected from radium. Bombardment of nitrogen
with alpha-particles (helium nuclei), for instance, produces
hydrogen and oxygen. The actual amount of transmutation
achieved is exceedingly small, for the nucleus, it will be
recalled, is an infinitesimally tiny target and practically all
the alpha-particles are deflected away from it by the attrac
tive forces of the outer cloud of oppositely charged electrons
through which they must first penetrate. For this reason
only the simpler atoms are decomposed by alpha-ray bom
bardment ; more complex atoms are immune.

Investigators in recent years, however, have improved
their artillery equipment tremendously ; Rutherford's
original bullets have been replaced by high-explosive shell
with much greater velocity. The projectile which has proved
particularly destructive to heavier atoms is the neutron (see
page 161). As its name indicates, this is electrically neutral,
and it can therefore pierce the barricade of exterior electrons
quite easily. By the use of high-speed neutrons, all kinds

The future Mme Curie and her sister Bronya, 1886

jBy courtesy of Mile. Ei-e Curie

Pierre and Marie Curie

Mme Curie and her daughter Irene, 1925
By courtesy of Mile, Eve Curie

AND ELEMENTS NEW 1 73

of artificial disintegrations have been successfully performed ;
transmutation of other elements into gold, even, is now
possible. The cost of the process, however, fortunately or
unfortunately, vastly exceeds the value of the gold
obtained.

In January 1934 Frederic Joliot and Irene Joliot-Curie
reported the remarkable discovery that the products of the
bombardment of boron, magnesium and aluminium by
alpha-particles from polonium are themselves radioactive,
continuing to emit rays for some time after the natural source
had been withdrawn. The induced radioactivity of boron
is due to the formation of radio-nitrogen, an unstable isotope
of ordinary nitrogen with a half-period of fourteen minutes.
This same radio-nitrogen, the two experimenters predicted,
should be produced by bombarding carbon with deuterons
projectiles obtained from a newly discovered heavy isotope
of hydrogen and this prediction was shortly afterwards
confirmed. The years since 1934 have witnessed, indeed,
the production of a bewildering array of artificially radio
active elements of all types, with half-lives varying from
seconds to years. Frederic Joliot and Irne Joliot-Curie have
been responsible, directly and indirectly, for the discovery
of more species of atoms than all preceding chemists put
together.

Practical applications of induced radioactivity are already
evident, although the subject is still only in its infancy. Radio-
sodium, for example, with a half-period of fifteen hours,
has been produced in quantities sufficient to justify the hope
that artificial radioactive substances may, in the near future,
replace radium in medical work. An active modification
of phosphorus, obtained by bombarding ordinary phosphorus
with deuterons, is of even greater immediate interest. This
substance has a half-period of two weeks, long enough to
enable us to study the role of phosphorus in animal life in
an intimate way never before possible. If rats are fed on
a diet containing active phosphorus in the form of sodium
phosphate, its progress through their whole bodies can be

GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

followed, simply by tracing the radioactive atoms. Through
such work it has already been established that the mineral
matter of bones is in a dynamic state, phosphorus atoms
being continually lost and replaced. Furthermore, although
it had previously been assumed that no regeneration of the
brain tissue of adult animals takes place, the discovery of
active phosphorus atoms in the lecithin of the brain tissue
of rats, one hour after they had been given an injection of

FIG. 23 * I'm not sure, sir, but I BELIEVE I've split the Atom
(Reproduced by permission of the Proprietors of Punch]

active sodium phosphate, suggests that a constant breakdown
and rebuilding of material is here also occurring.

The entity that Dalton considered as inherently in
divisible, indestructible and eternal is evidently in parlous
peril nowadays. At any moment it is liable to suffer the
indignity pictured by Punch in the drawing above.

That drawing, you will notice, is dated 1937, and since
1937 the full-scale splitting of the atom has indeed been
accomplished, in the form of the atomic bomb. The atomic

AND ELEMENTS NEW 175

bomb, it must be emphasised, cannot be ascribed to young
chemists. Work in this field is not the type of work that an
independent investigator can undertake it involves pro
digious expense, and whole teams of trained scientists under
the supervision of expert directors but it is necessary to
discuss its development briefly in order to bring our account
of the atom up to date.

In January 1939 O. Hahn and F. Strassman in Germany
announced their discovery that an isotope (p. 161) of barium
was one of the products of the neutron bombardment of
uranium. How excited scientists were by this discovery may
be seen from the fact that before the end of the year nearly
one hundred papers appeared on this new kind of atomic
fission. Its importance lay in the gigantic amounts of energy
thereby released, and in 1940 publications suddenly stopped
owing to war secrecy regulations. The source of this colossal
energy evolution may now be discussed. Do not expect this
discussion to be bright and breezy ; the topic does not lend
itself to such treatment. And do not expect me to supply
any practical details on the manufacture of atomic bombs ;
I am neither wise enough nor foolish enough to do so. I
shall confine myself rigorously to fundamental facts,

As was mentioned on page 160, the mass of the hydrogen
atom ( i -0078) is abnormal. This is so because, inside the very
minute nuclei of all other atoms, protons and neutrons are
packed so closely together that their electro-magnetic fields
interfere and a fraction of the combined mass is destroyed.
The helium atom, for example, contains the same total
material as four hydrogen atoms, but its mass is not
4X1-0078=4-0312; it is only 4-003. The proportionate
influence of this packing effect on atomic mass for still more
complex nuclei is almost constant, but not exactly so. This
may best be illustrated by comparing all atomic masses
with that of the mass-spectrograph standard, 16 O. Fig. 24
shows the curve obtained when mass number (the total
number of protons in the nucleus) is plotted against what
Aston has called the packing fraction (the mean gain or loss

o

"-C2

176

AND ELEMENTS NEW 177

in mass per proton when the nuclear packing is changed
from that of 16 O to that of each other atomic species).

Several points of interest emerge from this curve. The
initial, steeply descending sections (the curve splits into two
distinct branches for the earlier elements, following those of
odd and even atomic number respectively) indicate that the
masses of atoms lighter than 16 O are slightly higher in the
single case of hydrogen significantly higher than whole
numbers. Through a long range of elements in the central
part of the diagram the packing fraction is negative, so that
atomic masses in this interval are slightly lower than whole
numbers. In the region of the rare earths the curve crosses
the zero line once more, and atomic masses are again above
integral values. A more accurate graph, on a larger scale,
for these latter sections is given in Fig. 25.

Elucidation of these variations is obtained by the applica
tion of the theory of relativity. What we have lost in mass
through nuclear packing we have gained in energy. Mass
and energy are not distinct phenomena, but interconvertible ;
matter is potential energy, energy is potential matter. The
law of conservation of mass holds within our limits of weigh
ing, for all ordinary chemical reactions, only because the
energy changes involved are extremely small. Energy
changes in reactions c within the atom,' however, first
demonstrated in radioactive disintegrations, may be enor
mous. Correlating our old laws of conservation of mass and
conservation of energy into one wider law conservation of
mass-energy we can calculate what change in mass corre
sponds to any particular energy change, and vice versa. We
find that the mass change in ordinary chemical reactions is
infinitesimal, and that even in radioactive disintegrations it
is still minute. Conversely, if the mass change is appreciable,
as in the case of hydrogen-helium, the energy change involved
in the rearrangement of the protons and electrons must be
stupendous.

It is very significant that the minimum in the packing
fraction curve lies in the neighbourhood of iron, one of the

^

I

60

"fe

a

17S

AND ELEMENTS NEW 179

most abundant elements in nature. Atoms in the region
of this minimum should be most stable, whereas atoms at
the two extremes of the diagram should be susceptible to
highly explosive transformations to other types. Such trans
formations, in the case of normal radioactive disintegrations,
cany us only short distances along the curve at the right
of Fig. 25. A much longer jump, however, has now been
achieved by the fission of uranium, which renders the large-
scale use of atomic energy possible, in peace (be it noted)
as well as in war. Atomic fusion of the lighter elements (as
in the so-called ' hydrogen bomb *) would obviously release
even greater amounts of energy per unit weight of matter
transmuted. This has only recently been effected on a major
scale on our planet (although, by bombarding a target of
lithium with protons of 700,000 electron volts energy, Cock-
roft and Walton induced the reaction, 7 U+ 1 H-* 4 He+*He,
where the energy of the ejected a-particles exceeds 8,000,000
electron volts, as early as 1932), but a chain of reactions in
which the 12 C atom functions as a catalyst for the transfor
mation of hydrogen into helium is regarded by astrophysicists
as offering the first adequate explanation for the source of
the heat of the sun throughout the lifetime of our solar
system.

Our own danger, that the means of initiating some such
process on this earth may be discovered, that the resulting
chain of reactions may get out of control, and that the success
of the experiment may be announced to the rest of the
universe in the form of a new and exceedingly bright star,
is not immediately acute, but what the future will bring no
man can tell. To end on a more cheerful note, however,
let it be recorded that radioactive by-products of atomic
energy stations are already being put to valuable use as
c tracer elements/ permitting the extension of studies such
as those described on page 173 to a degree that woulc^
otherwise be quite impracticable.

l8o GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

And, as a reward for those who have followed this long
discussion faithfully in spite of the warning on page 175
that I should neither be whimsical nor give away any
secrets on the manufacture of atomic bombs, here is a
Ruthless Rhyme that has been circulating among chemists
recently :

This is the tale of Frederick Worms
Whose parents weren't on speaking terms.
When Freddy wrote to Santa Glaus
He wrote in duplicate because
One went to Dad and one to Mum ;
Each asked for some plutonium.
Now Frederick's father and his mother
Without consulting one another
Both bought a lump of largish size
Intending it for a surprise.
They met in Freddy's stocking and
Laid waste some ten square miles of land.

Learn from this tale of nuclear fission
And don't mix science with superstition.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Crucibles. B. Jaffe, 1930.

* H. G. J. Moseley, 1887-1915.' Lord Rutherford, Proceedings

of the Royal Society of London, 1917.

At Home among the Atoms. J. Kendall, 1929.

Madame Curie, feve Curie, 1938.

The Story of Atomic Energy. F. Soddy, 1949.

* The Adventures of an Hypothesis.' J. Kendall, Proceedings of

the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 1950.

The Title-page of the First Chemical Journal

/ >

'////////,

///<

t r tf & /fir -^ /''f/ff.^s <'f/fS

The Title-page to Paper 16, by Mr Haliday

CHAPTER VIII

THE FIRST CHEMICAL SOCIETY AND THE
FIRST CHEMICAL JOURNAL

THE preceding chapters have shown what young chemists,
working singly, have accomplished in the achievement of
great discoveries. The present chapter will demonstrate
how young chemists, acting in unison, also anticipated their
elders in the institution of chemical societies and chemical
journals. Without discussion and publication of ideas,
chemistry would indeed be a dead subject, and young
chemists were the first to find the best way to keep it alive.

In very olden days chemists did not forgather merely
as chemists ; they merged themselves in broader organisa
tions such as the Royal Society. The c chemical revolution 5
which had its real beginning with the work of Joseph Black
and which culminated in the overthrow of the phlogiston
theory by Lavoisier aroused, for the first time, a popular
interest in the special science of chemistry. Until recently,
world priority among the chemical societies that resulted
therefrom was by general agreement conceded to theGhemical
Society of Philadelphia, founded by James Woodhouse in
1792. An account of the work of this society and of its
founder will be given in a later chapter (pages 199-201).

The title of the Chemical Society of Philadelphia was not
questioned until 1935. In April of that year the Edinburgh
University Chemical Society met to celebrate its Diamond
Jubilee, being under the impression that it was founded
only sixty years previously, and I was requested to prepare
a speech for the occasion. Reading Sir William Ramsay's
biography of Joseph Black to obtain some historical material
for this oration, I came across the statement that, among
tbe correspondence of Joseph Black, Ramsay had discovered
a sheet of paper, of which only the date, 1785, was in Black's

(969) 181 W

1 82

GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

handwriting, entitled c List of the Members of the Chemical
Society.' Ramsay remarked regarding this as follows :

This may have been a society of persons residing in Edinburgh
interested in Chemistry, but is more likely to have been a general
society. . . . The only name that I can recognize is that of
Dr Thos. Beddoes [the founder of the Pneumatic Institute and
the 4 discoverer ' of Sir Humphry Davy] ; the names themselves
would indicate that their possessors belonged to all parts of the
kingdom.

The complete list of names fifty-nine in all is repro
duced below :

John Webster
Wm. Scott

Halliday
Jas. Forster
Sam. Black
Jno. Black
Jas. Plumbe
Wm. Johnston
Thos. Clothier
Henry Johnston
Peter Gernon
Robt, Ross
L. van Meurs

(amteemann batavis)
Hugh Brown
John Boyton
Edw. Fairclough
Bicker McDonald
E. Galley
An. Mann

Hen. N. Ward
Morgan Deasy
H. Pache
Jno. Gay
Tho. McMorran
Adam Gillespy
Thos. Burnside
Corn. Pyne
J. Unthank
J. Barrow
J. Dona van
Saml. Macoy
G. Tower
J. Sedgwick
T. Skeete
Wm. Robertson
J. Sprole
Thos. Cooke
Thos. Edgar
Guyton Jolly

J. Alderson
J. McElwaine
T. Gill
T. Willson
Frs. Montgomery
Thos. Swainson
Archd. Webb
J. Crumbie
Geo. Marjoribanks
T. Grieg
J. Parr
Alex. Stevens
Wm. Symonds
Thos. Beddoes
J. Thompson
G. Kirkaldie
J. Carmichel
Nich. Elcock
Richd. Gray
J. Hayle

The idea struck me that an examination of the register
of students at the University of Edinburgh at that period
might identify more of the names in the above list. This
register was accordingly consulted, and within a quarter of
an hour it was established that no fewer than fifty-three out
of the fifty-nine were students attending Black's class in
chemistry at Edinburgh University during the years 1 783-7.

THE FIRST CHEMICAL SOCIETY 183

Thanks to the kindly zeal of Dr Alexander Morgan, five
of the missing six were also subsequently traced as registered
students of Joseph Black between 1780 and 1788. The
only name on the list definitely unlocated is that of Peter
Gernon.

In the light of the above discoveries, it became my
pleasant duty to inform my fellow-members of the Edinburgh
University Chemical Society at their c Diamond Jubilee
luncheon ' that they had been called together under false
pretences, since they were actually celebrating their Sesqui-
centenary ! For it is quite plain that the society of 1 785 was
not, as Ramsay surmised, a general society. It was, on the
contrary, a society consisting of those members of Black's
class with a special interest in chemistry in other words,
it was the Chemical Society of the University of Edinburgh.
How long it survived after 1785 we have still no knowledge,
but once the origin of its membership had been fixed the
possibility, noted by Ramsay, of locating 'some one of
their descendants in possession of some record of its pro
ceedings and history,' clearly became much more likely of
realisation.

Twenty-one out of the fifty-nine members are on the list
of medical graduates of the University of Edinburgh between
the years 1784-90, This list also gives the nationality in
each case, and it is interesting to find that, of the twenty-one
only three were native Scots, three English, and the residual
fifteen all Irish ! Joseph Black was himself, of course,
of Belfast ancestry, and the proportion of Irish students in
the Scottish universities has always been significant ; but
such a preponderance as this is very surprising. Whether
its Irish element was responsible for the disruption of the
society (it is ominous that Bicker McDonald and J. Unthank
were both Hibernians) is a question that, perhaps just as
well, we are not in a position to press.

The first chemical society in the world to complete a
hundred years of continuous existence was the Chemical
Society of London, the official records of which state that

184 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

c on the 23rd of February., 1841, twenty-five gentlemen
interested in the prosecution of Chemistry met together at
the Society of Arts to consider whether it be expedient to
form a Chemical Society.' Even after the publication of my
account of the origin of the Chemical Society of the Univer
sity of Edinburgh, the Chemical Society of London could
still, quite justifiably, object that no evidence had been
adduced that the Chemical Society of 1785 ever really
functioned as a society. Nothing definite was known of its
activities ; there were no publications, no records of meetings,
merely a list of names. How this deficiency was remedied
will now be described.

In March 1947 I received a letter from the Rev. P. J.
McLaughlin, D.Sc., of St Patrick's College, Maynooth, to
the effect that he had discovered in the archives of the Royal
Irish Academy, Dublin, a folio volume containing a collec
tion of * Dissertations read before the Chemical Society
instituted in the beginning of the Year 1785.' This volume,
according to its tide-page, had been presented to the Royal
Irish Academy a century previously, in January 1846. No
specific mention of its source was apparent anywhere in the
volume, and it remained a puzzle to Dr McLaughlin until
he was referred by chance by Dr Farrington, Librarian of the
Academy, to an article which I had written in Endeavour in
1942 on * Some eighteenth-century chemical societies. 3 A
partial list of the contributors, which Dr McLaughlin sent
me, consisted of names that all appear on Joseph Black's
sheet

I wrote at once to the Council of the Royal Irish Academy
requesting them to be kind enough to loan the volume to
the Royal Society of Edinburgh so that I might have the
opportunity of inspecting it carefully. This favour was
promptly accorded, and examination of its contents soon
convinced me that I indeed held in my hands the first
volume of the Proceedings of the Chemical Society of the
University of Edinburgh. Presumably the unknown secre-

THE FIRST CHEMICAL SOCIETY 185

tary of the society, to whose admirable diligence this record
owes its being, was one of the formidable fraction of Irish
members and retained possession of his handiwork when he
returned to his native country.

The book is a well-bound folio of 452 pages in copper
plate manuscript, and contains thirty-two dissertations on
topics of chemical interest. Some of the title-pages to the
communications are true works of art. All of the con
tributors are on Joseph Black's list, with the exception of
Numbers 22 and 27, Mr William Lecky and Mr S. Latham
Mitchill, and it must be assumed that these gentlemen joined
the society after its inception. At the conclusion of Paper 15
the words are added: 'Edin r , 26 th , Nov* 1785*; this is
the only direct reference to Edinburgh in the volume. The
beautifiolly clear handwriting throughout does not indicate,
as I fondly supposed on first inspection, that students of that
period were all experts in penmanship ; its identity in
numerous papers bears witness to the employment of
professional scriveners. These occasionally could not
decipher chemical terms contained in the manuscript, and
left blanks for their subsequent insertion ; where such
insertions have been made they are still apt to be almost
illegible.

Unfortunately the thirty-two communications include
very little matter of major scientific importance, and my
expectation that the volume might afford a valuable, as well
as a unique, record of contemporary chemical thought has
not been felicitously realised. I had hoped to find the great
Joseph Black himself participating in discussions upon the
onslaught that Lavoisier was then launching against the
phlogiston theory of Stahl, but Black suffered much from
ill health during his latter years and there is no note of his
attendance at any of the meetings of the society. References
to e the learned Doctor * and to his work, however, are very
frequent. Most of the papers are routine descriptive chem
istry of the classical period, and one of the most promising
of the few exceptions ' An attempt to point out some of

1 86 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

the Consequences which flow from Mr Cavendishes Dis
covery of the Component Parts of Water/ by Mr Thomas
Beddoes peters out, after a tantalising start, into an
addendum entitled e A Conjecture concerning the Use of
Manure ' ! Evidently the youthful Humphry Davy was
not unduly disrespectful when he described Dr Beddoes,
under whose direction he was working at the Pneumatic
Institution at Clifton in 1799-1800, to be e as little
fitted for a Mentor as a weather-cock for a compass "
(page 16).

This disappointment, however, emboldened me to make
a second request to the Council of the Royal Irish Academy,
a request which I should not have felt justified in making
if the volume had proved to be of greater intrinsic value,
namely that the Council should agree to return the volume
to its original owners, the Chemical Society of the University
of Edinburgh. To this request the Council of the Royal
Irish Academy graciously assented, and I was accordingly
able, at a meeting of the Society held on 25 November 1947,
to make formal restoration to the first chemical society in
the world of the first volume of its Proceedings. Even if it
has no great scientific significance, it does after all constitute
the first journal extant of a purely chemical character,
antedating by five years the Annales de Chimie initiated in
Paris in 1790, and extracts from it may well prove worthy
of wider publication.

Careful examination, indeed, has disclosed that one paper
does contain matter of significant historical interest.

The penultimate paper of the first volume of the Proceed
ings of the Chemical Society of the University of Edinburgh,
presumably read in the latter part of the year 1786, is
entitled : * Some Account of the Theories of Combustion,
of Heat, of Light, and of Colour,' by Mr John Carmichaell.
That this youthful philosopher was well aware that he had
undertaken a heavy responsibility in discussing all these
topics at once is seen by a Latin subscript to the title :

THE FIRST CHEMICAL SOCIETY 1 87

* Lent me conigite manuj which may be freely translated :
e Don't spank me too severely for my mistakes ! ' We shall
concern ourselves here solely with his views on the burning
topic of phlogiston (see page 9). Mr Carmichaell plunges
right into the fight in his first paragraph :

Mr President : Stahl was the first who reduced Chemistry
to a regular Science, and enriched it by addition, or at best the
Extention, of Becher's doctrine of the Inflammable Earth, Phlo
giston, or the Principle of Inflammability. Altho' perhaps we
owe the advanced State in which we find the Science at this day
to the introduction of this Principal, as it has all along afforded
such easy and clear explanation of all Chemical Phenomena,
yet it is frequently the cause of the utmost confusion and Ambi
guity, as in speaking of it or endeavouring to describe it there
are hardly two Persons who seem to possess any distinct or even
the same ideas concerning it, or in describing it use the same
language. It is covered with a dark Veil and protected by
inexplicable Jargon.

After citing a number of examples of such jargon, Mr
Carmichaell proceeds :

However hypothetical this doctrine may appear, it has for
long met with Courtesy, and Men of Science have unanimously
countenanced it, and perhaps it might long have remained to
be so, luted in the most perfect security, had not the Experiment
ing Genius of a Rey, Hales, Priestiey, Bayen, Lavoisier or some
other called in question on what Men of more confined or less
exalted ideas of nature would have reckoned sacriligeous to
have attempted.

Before bidding adieu to the Manes of Phlogiston and wishing
its Eternal Oblivion, the ingenuity of a Scheele and a Crawford
demand our serious attention.

The body of Mr CarmichaelTs paper consists, in fact, of
a discussion of the experiments and theories of c the ingenious
Mr Scheele, 5 c the studious Macquer/ the learned Lavoisier *
and c the ingenious Dr Lubbock. 5 Having then explored the
nature of heat, light and colour rather less difiusedly, he
concludes as follows :

1 88 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

And asking forgiveness of the Society for the many inac
curacies, perhaps neither few nor small, that I may have been
Led into, I conclude with the following line from Virgil which
I think is applicable to this fanciful Proteus Phlogiston :

Vcnit summa. dies

Fuimus Troes, fuit Ilium et ingens gloria Teucrorum.

Now what is there remarkable in the fact that this
young medical student should have announced so con
fidently in 1786 that the last hour of phlogiston had
arrived ? To answer this question I shall need to discuss the
contemporary views of more famous chemists, particularly
Joseph Black.

The opinion is still common among chemists that Joseph
Black was among the last to abandon the theory of phlogiston
and to accept the ideas of Lavoisier. P. Rousseau has
painted this vivid picture :

StahTs phlogiston loses its supporters one by one. .
Ghaptal has already banished phlogiston from his course of
lectures at Montpellier ; Berthollet follows suit in 1785. In
1786 it is the turn of Guyton de Morveau . . . the following
year it is Fourcroy who burns what he has idolised . . . and
claims the glory of being the first to teach officially Lavoisier's
theory. Abroad, there is a much more lively resistance, especially
hi England and Germany, Slowly, however, the learned men
renounce their errors ; Jacquin in Holland, the famous Black,
There are only a few irreconcilables. ...

This misrepresentation originates essentially from John
Robison, Professor of Natural Philosophy in the University
of Edinburgh and the first secretary of the Royal Society
of Edinburgh, who edited the posthumous edition of Black's
Lectures on the Elements of Chemistry. In the course of
his editorial observations thereto, Robisou relates in detail
how Lavoisier, in July 1790, learning that Black thought
well of his theory and had introduced it into his lectures,
sent Mm a long letter full of flattery to inform him of his

THE FIRST CHEMICAL SOCIETY 1 89

inexpressible joy. How Black wrote a very plain, candid
and unadorned reply, expressing his acquiescence. How
Lavoisier answered this by praising in the highest terms the
elegance of its style, the profoundness of its philosophy, etc.,
etc., and asked permission to publish it in the Annales de
Ckimie. How Black, who had been in very low spirits when
he wrote that letter, and was much dissatisfied with Its feeble
ness, grew disgusted and refused, and how the letter appeared
in print before his refusal reached Paris. How Black found
out that Lavoisier, after all this obsequiousness, did not once
mention Black's name in his scientific publications, but
discussed Black's ideas as if they were all his owru How
Black saw red and resumed his criticism of Lavoisier's theory,
expressing his utter disapprobation of the bullying manner
in which the French chemists were trying to force their
system on the world.

Is there an atom of truth in this story ? That question
can now be definitely answered in the negative, owing to
a discovery made in 1949 by Dr Douglas McKie, and I
shall proceed to give a condensed account of this discovery,
since it leads me right back to young Mr CarmichaelL

In September 1793 two representatives of the Paris
revolutionary committee called upon Lavoisier to search and
seal his papers. Some letters written in English were taken
away ; they are now in the Archives de France, and among
them are two from Joseph Black. The first, dated 24 October
1790, is the * very plain, candid and unadorned letter'
alluded to by Robison. The following extracts are relevant
here :

You have been informed that I endeavour in my Courses
to make my Pupils understand the new principles and explana
tions of the Science of Chemistry which you have so happily
invented and that I begin to recommend them as more simple
& plain and better supported by Facts than the former system,
and how could I do otherways ? Your numerous & well con
trived experiments have been performed with such uncommon

1 90 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

accuracy & attention to every circumstance of any importance . . .
that nothing can be more satisfactory than the proofs of the
Facts which you have investigated. And the System you have
founded on these facts is so strictly connected with them and
so simple & intelligible that it must be approved more & more
ervery day and will even be adopted by many of those Chemists
who have long been habituated to the former System : To gain
them all is not to be expected, you know too well the power of
habit which enslaves the minds of the bulk of mankind and
makes them believe & reverence the greatest absurditys. I must
confess that I felt the power of it myself, having been habituated
30 years to believe & teach the doctrine of Phlogiston as formerly
understood. . . . But tho the power of habit may prevent many
of the older Chemists from approving of your Ideas, the younger
ones will not be influenced by the same power ; they will uni
versally range themselves on your side of which we have experience
in this university where the students enjoy the most perfect
liberty of chuseing their philosophical opinions. They in general
embrace your system and begin to make use of the new nomen
clature in proof of which I send you two of their inaugural
dissertations in which chemical subjects were chosen ; these
Dissertations are wrote entirely by the students ; the Professors
have no share in them.

Black certainly does not seem to have written this letter
in very low spirits, or to have any reason to be dissatisfied
with its feebleness ; Robison's subsequent statement that he
was so disgusted by the artful flattery of Lavoisier's reply
that he refused to permit its publication is refuted by a
second letter, hitherto unpublished, sent from Edinburgh on
28 December 1790, which begins thus :

Mr Gahagan who is just returned to this Place made me
happy with your letter of the igth Nov r . last & with the account
he gave me of the ardor with which you still pursue your philos
ophical researches. It gave me pleasure also to find that you
are satisfyed with the avowal I have made of my approbation
of your System of Chemistry. You have my full consent to
publish my letter. This consent I consider as a tribute I owe
to truth and the eminent Rank you hold as a promoter & Patron
of the Science of Chemistry : in publishing it you may leave
out any parts of it which you think superfluous.

THE FIRST CHEMICAL SOCIETY

Lavoisier was, accordingly, perfectly justified when he
published a French translation (by Madame Lavoisier) of
Letter I in the Annales de Chimie in March 1791. As Dr
McKie succinctly remarks : ' The translation is unexcep
tionable and Black's wishes have been scrupulously
observed. The whole incident does credit to two great
chemists. 5

In Black's first letter to Lavoisier, he mentions that he is
sending him two inaugural dissertations written by his
students, which make use of the new nomenclature. Now, by
good fortune, Mr John Carmichaell is one of the twenty-one
original members of the Chemical Society instituted in 1 785
whose name appears on the list of medical graduates of the
University of Edinburgh, This inspired me to disinter a copy
of his inaugural dissertation from the vaults of the University
library, in the hope that it might contain matter of interest.
My hope was, indeed, richly fulfilled.

The dissertation is entitled De Fermentalione y and was
submitted in August 1787. It is not easy to decode, since
it is written entirely in Latin of very uncertain pedigree,
but a short translated extract from its introductory para
graphs will suffice to show that Dr Carmichaell was of the
same mind with regard to phlogiston in 1787 as Mr Car
michaell was in 1786 :

The philosophers of our age have advanced chemistry con
siderably ; current knowledge has thrown much new light on
the science ; it is now possible to discuss many operations with
precision ; the necessity of taking the air into consideration is
now well established ; phlogiston, that mysterious principle,
has by almost unanimous consent been cast out of chemistry,
while in place of shadow, substance is to-day favoured by the
well-informed.

For these reasons, I have chosen the doctrine called the
s pneumatic doctrine.'

On the basis of this doctrine, consequently, Dr Car
michaell develops his treatise on fermentation, with refer-

1 92 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

enees to Black (clarissimus] and Lavoisier (hodie primarius
scientissimus). His argument, however, is not very interesting
from a modern point of view, for he is flogging what is now
a very dead horse. Perhaps the most significant line in his
thesis is on the tide-page, where he proudly announces
himself as Extraordinary Member and President for the Year
of the Chemical Society of Edinburgh. For this makes it
dear, first, that the Society was not an ephemeral organisa
tion, but survived at least into the year 1 787, and secondly,
that the anti-phlogistic opinions expressed in Mr Car-
michaelTs paper to the Society (pages 186-8) received such
general approbation that his fellow-members almost immedi
ately thereafter proceeded to elect him their president. It
is almost certain, moreover, in view of the final paragraphs
of Black's first letter to Lavoisier, that Dr CarmichaelTs
inaugural dissertation of 1787 was one of the two exhibits
sent to Paris in 1790.

Although Black states that his students enjoyed c the most
perfect liberty of chuseing their philosophical opinions,' few
teachers will doubt that the majority moulded their views on
the pronouncements of their professor, and the first volume
of the Proceedings of the Chemical Society of the University
of Edinburgh renders it practically certain that Black, in
1785-6, while endeavouring to present both doctrines to his
chemistry class as impartially as possible, was already leading
the more perspicacious among them from the old path to
the new. When leisure allows me, I plan to look through
all the Inaugural Dissertations of a chemical nature sub
mitted to the Faculty of Medicine in the years between 1785
and 1790 to check this assumption and to discover how many
other converts to Lavoisier's ideas, besides Dr Carmichaell,
testified in Edinburgh during that period. The search will
also, I hope, enable me to extend the c active life ' of our
first chemical society still further, perhaps even beyond
1790.

I wish, in particular, to find out more about Dr John
Garmichaell ; his thesis does disclose a few additional details.

THE FIRST CHEMICAL SOCIETY 193

First, the word Scotus after his name indicates that he was
among the native minority of the original members of the
Chemical Society (p. 183). Second, he was also a member
of the Royal Medical Society, a student organisation founded
in 1737 (what pioneers Edinburgh students of that century
were !) and still flourishing. Third, he dedicates his disserta
tion to his kinsman, Thomas Hay, Esquire, of the Royal
College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. So far, my search for
facts of his later life has been fruitless, but I am still on his
trail. 1

And now, my readers, if you possess friends with a
common interest in chemistry, don't you think it would be
well worth while to start a chemical society of your own for
the discussion of topics of current importance ? You might
even keep a record of the papers presented by members at
the meetings of such a society, and this record might help
chemical historians of the year 2100 to appreciate the
scientific problems of today.

1 Through the kindness of J. G. Kyd, Chairman of the Scots Ancestry
Research Society, I have been furnished with the following data regarding
Dr John Carmichaell :

1. His father, Dr Michael Carmichaei ' of Hizellhead in the parish of
Carmichall/ was married on 25 April 1756 to Miss Mary Hay, daughter
of John Hay, W.S., of the North-East parish of Edinburgh.

2. The Carmichaei family appears to have been resident at Eastend,
Carmichaei (a village near Lanark), for centuries. John's elder brother
Maurice became head of the family on the death of his uncle in 1 789.

3. John Hay, W.S., a great-grandson of Sir John Hay of Barra, accompanied
Prince Charles to France and was attainted in 1745. It was to his nephew,
Thomas Hay, M.D., of Edinburgh (born 1751 died 1816), the fifth son
of Thomas, Lord Huntington, that Dr John Carmichaei dedicated hb in
augural dissertation in 1787.

4. John himself was born at Hazelhead, Carmichaei, on 20 February
1766. No details of his career after graduation have yet come to light

194 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Life and Letters of Joseph Black, M.D. Sir William Ramsay,
1918

* Some Eighteenth-Century Chemical Societies. 3 J. Kendall,

Endeavour, 1942

Lectures on the Elements of Chemistry, by the late Joseph Black. Edited
by J. Robison, 1803

* Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, F.R.S.' Dr McKie, Notes and

Records of the Royal Society of London, 1949

CHAPTER IX
SOME YOUNG AMERICAN CHEMISTS

I WISH to make this chapter a little more informal than those
which have preceded it. I am about to deal with young
American chemists, and Americans are not accustomed to
insist on ceremony.

There are several reasons why it is appropriate to include
some young American chemists in this volume. In the first
place, it was an American scientist, Benjamin Thompson,
who founded the Royal Institution and gave it Humphry
Davy. Benjamin Thompson's career was even more colour
ful than that of Davy himself. He was a man who never
did things by halves. Born in Massachusetts in 1753, he
held commissions on both sides during the War of Independ
ence. Davy married one wealthy widow, but Thompson
married two. For eleven years he was the e Big Boss ' of
Bavaria, running the country benevolently and wisely, and
being created for his services Count Rumford of the Holy
Roman Empire. He may even be regarded as the inventor
of concentration camps, for the Encyclopaedia Britannica
relates :

In one day he had 2,600 beggars and depredators in Munich
and its suburbs alone arrested and transferred to an industrial
establishment which he prepared for them. In this institution
they not only supported themselves, but earned a surplus for
die electoral revenues.

His great scientific work was a paper presented to the
Royal Society of London in 1 798, in which he denied the
current belief that heat was a material substance, postulating
instead that it was a form of motion or energy that could
be excited by friction. His interest in this question had first
been roused by the enormous amount of heat developed

I<j6 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

during the boring of cannon. While in London, also, he
applied himself to the discovery of methods for curing smoky
chimneys and to improvements in fireplace construction ;
every American who visits England still vexes himself with
the same problems. But domestic friction finally excluded
all other varieties of heat and energy from his mind. His
second marriage, to the widow of the famous French chemist,
Lavoisier, was not a comfortable one. He might be able to
boss Bavaria, but he met his match in her. When he last
met Davy in Paris on that stormy honeymoon tour of 1813,
which I described on pages 25 and 42, they must have ex
changed some interesting confidences. He died in the
following year.

A second, and more personal, reason why I should discuss
young American chemists here is that I myself, as a young
chemist, enjoyed the hospitality of the United States for
fifteen years, teaching and doing research in New York City.
During that period I acquired a warm admiration for
American chemistry and American chemists, and I trust
that you will pardon me if I incorporate into this chapter
a few of my own reminiscences.

My last, and most important, reason for recounting the
achievements of some young American chemists is that the
United States, as befits a youthful country, has always
fostered the development of budding talent. Such has not
always been the case in Europe ; it must have struck you,
in the course of this volume, how frequently young chemists
there have been discouraged and derided by their elders.
Couper, Pasteur, Van 't Hoff, Arrheruus and Newlands are
typical examples. All of these made discoveries which were
shown later to be of first-class merit, but most of their seniors
did all they could to suppress them. Nothing of that kind
has ever occurred in America.

Wilhelm Ostwald, who studied, as you will remember,
the subject of youthful genius so intimately, was greatly
wrought up over this whole question. * How can we get
rid/ te asked, * of these old men with established reputations

SOME YOUNG AMERICAN CHEMISTS IQ7

whose minds have become fossilised and who are hindering,
instead of assisting, the progress of chemistry ? 9 Fortunately
the problem, in democratic countries at any rate, is no longer
an acute one. Antipathy to accept young ideas proved to
be only a passing phase, a product of the exaggerated respect
for age and authority that characterised the Victorian era.
Nobody discouraged Moseley or Bohr, nobody derided
Frederic Joliot or Irene Joliot-Gurie. We elders have made
such a muddle of affairs in general that, in science at least,
we are content to look now to the younger generation for
our salvation.

In certain totalitarian states, on the other hand, science
has been made utterly subservient to government control, and
the results have already proved calamitous for science. The
spirit of independent research, which demands freedom of
ideas, has been killed.

Let me begin this chapter proper with a personal anec
dote, illustrative of the way in which America welcomes
youth.

I first went to the United States in 1913, after two years
of wandering around Europe, working in various research
laboratories. I had received an appointment as instructor
in chemistry at Columbia University, and I took my
approaching duties very seriously. In the course of my
Continental travels I had acquired quite a library of scientific
books, which I thought would be necessary for the prepara
tion of my lectures. Half-way across the Atlantic I was given
a long form to fill up, a customs declaration, and I began
to get worried whether I should have to pay a large duty
(which I could not afford) on those books. One clause of
the declaration, however, stated that the implements of one's
profession were duty free, and I decided that the books
were going to be the * implements of my profession.'

The customs inspector I drew on the landing-stage
thought differently. e You gotta pay a lot of duty on these
books, buddy ! * he informed me as soon as he opened up

(969) 14

ig8 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

my heavy trunks. * Nothing doing ! ' I replied. e They are
the tools of my trade. I need these books to teach chemistry
at Columbia University.' ' You're telling me ! * was the
answer. * Axes is tools, and saws is tools, but books is just
books ! ' Things were looking very black until, sorting out
my tomes into two heaps, English and foreign (only the
former, it seemed, were dutiable), he came across some in
Swedish. His attitude changed immediately ; it turned out
that he was of Swedish parentage himself. * Say, Doc !
can you speak Swedish ? ' he inquired. I explained that I
had lived in Sweden for a year and I knew the words all
right, but I was still a bit shaky on the tune. He gave me
a test and found that I was telling the truth. Thenceforth
there was never any question of duty, our talk became
purely a friendly one.

He discovered volumes in French, in German and in
Italian, and called upon his colleagues to examine me in
each of these three languages. Finally he ran into a volume
in Russian. You don't say you speak Russian too, Prof ! *
he exclaimed. I confessed that I was not an expert, but
could keep my end up in an ordinary conversation. A fifth
inspector proved that this was correct, and then he took them
all a little distance apart to go into a huddle on my case,
leaving me to meditate how difficult it was to get into
America and to wonder how anybody ever managed to
enter at all.

They came back in a body, and he asked me point-
blank : How much money are they going to pay you,
Professor, for teaching chemistry at Columbia ? * I told him
100 dollars a month. * See here,' he cried, ' don't you be
a darned fool ! You ain't going to teach chemistry at
Columbia at 100 dollars a month. Me and my friends
can get you a job as interpreter at 200 dollars a month,
right here on this dock ! *

That was my reception in America ; before I had
actually set foot on shore my salary had been raised 100
per cent I But I was a darned fool, I went to Columbia,

SOME YOUNG AMERICAN CHEMISTS 199

and fifteen years later my friends told me that I was a darned
fool again when I left the United States and returned to
Great Britain. The call of my alma mater , Edinburgh, how
ever, was too attractive for me to resist.

Long before, in 1 794, America had given an enthusiastic
welcome to another English chemist, Joseph Priestley. This
distinguished veteran, the leading scientist of his day in
Great Britain, had made himself obnoxious to his fellow-
countrymen by his open sympathy with the French Revolu
tion, and on 14 July 1791 a riot occurred in Birmingham
in the course of which his house and laboratory were pillaged
and burned by the mob. He and his wife barely escaped
with their lives to London. Even there he was not free from
threats of personal violence, and finally he emigrated with
his family to the United States. As a victim of oppression,
he was made a national hero on his arrival ; one New York
newspaper published the following editorial :

The name of Joseph Priestley will be long remembered
among all enlightened people ; and there is no doubt that
England will one day regret her ungrateful treatment of this
venerable and illustrious rrmn. His persecutions in England have
presented to him the American Republic as a safe and honourable
retreat in his declining years ; and his arrival in this city calls
upon us to testify our respect and esteem for a man whose whole
life has been devoted to the sacred duty of diffusing knowledge
and happiness among nations.

America soon discovered, however, what a cantankerous
old customer she had to handle. Priestley might approve
of revolutions in ordinary affairs, but he did not extend his
approval to revolutions in chemistry. There he was dictator
and his word was law. When, however, he attempted to
cram his stale theory of phlogiston, which Lavoisier had
dumped into the dustbin, down the throats of American
chemists, he found an unexpected opponent in James Wood-
house, a young man who had been appointed to the chair
of chemistry in the University of Pennsylvania after Priestley

2OO GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

had refused the position. It looked at first like a pygmy
fighting a giant, but the pygmy proved that he was more
than capable of holding his own. In a beautifully written
little paper published in ' the Transactions of the American
Philosophical Society in 1799, Woodhouse showed that Priestley's
arguments and experiments were equally absurd. Poor
Priestley, who had rejoiced when he landed that America
was a country 'where every man enjoys the invaluable
liberty of speaking and writing whatever he pleases/ now
found American chemists altogether too independent for
his liking. But James Woodhouse was a fair and chivalrous
adversary, Dr John Maclean, of Princeton, attempted to
assist him in the attack on Priestley in a rather injudicious
way. Woodhouse at once wrote an article in which he
demonstrated that Priestley was quite right on the points
to which Maclean had objected, and then proceeded to pink
him in several more places that Maclean had overlooked.
One can almost hear this young republican saying to his
colleagues : * I don't want any help ! You go away and
find an Englishman of your own to fight ! * x

This same James Woodhouse, at the tender age of
twenty-two, had done another interesting thing : he had
founded in 1792 the Chemical Society of Philadelphia, long
considered to be the oldest chemical society in the world
(see page 181). Woodhouse's society, which, as might be
expected, * favoured Lavoisier's doctrine of combustion, '
lapsed with the untimely death of its founder in 1809.
Several papers presented at its meetings, however, have
survived, and the title-page of one of them is reproduced
on page 201. This records a real landmark in scientific
discovery, the invention of the <5&y-hydrogen blowpipe by
Robert Hare, a student only twenty-one years of age, in 1802.

1 A third young American chemist to oppose, in a very friendly manner,
the vkws of Priestley on phlogiston was Dr S. Latham Mitchill, professor
of chemistry at Columbia College, the first teacher of chemistry in America
to use the nomenclature of Lavoisier. We have already met Dr Mitchill
twice in this volume first hi connection with Humphry Davy (p. 9) and
second as a contributor to the first chemical journal (p. 185).

"c t-

I i

s I

be

MEMOIR

of the
SUPPLY Am> APPLICATION

of the
BLOW-PIPE.

Containing

An Account of the new method of supplying the Blow-
Pipe either with common air or oxygen gas: and also
of the effects of the intense heat produced by the
combustion of the hydrogen and oxygen gases.

HJ^USTBATED BY ENGEAYTNGS*

Published by order

of the

CHEMICAL SOCIETY
OF PHILADELPHIA,

to whom

it -was presented

BY ROBERT HARE, JUSL

Corresponding- member of the Society.

PHILADELPHIA :

Printed for the Chemical Society,

By H. Maxwell, Columbia-House,

1802.

FIG. 26 Title-page of Hare's book

201

2O2 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

Hare's devices for raising the temperature of a flame
were naturally crude, but it is on subsequent improvements
on his fundamental idea that all modern methods of cutting
and welding metals are based. Even with his original
apparatus he managed to melt many substances previously
regarded as infusible, and noted that certain bodies which
did not fuse glowed brilliantly on exposure to the flame,
a point which later entered more prominently into the
* limelight/ The present oxy-acetylene blowpipe gives a
much greater heat, and with its aid armour-plate two feet
thick can be cut into sections and steel buildings rapidly
taken apart. All this we owe, essentially, to Robert Hare.

He later gave additional evidence of his practical scientific
ingenuity in constructing new forms of the c voltaic pile/
He replaced the cumbrous and unmanageable Cruickshank
troughs employed by Davy in the discovery of the alkali
metals by an apparatus which he called a Deflagrator^ where
any series of cells could be instantaneously brought into
action or rendered passive at pleasure. The passage of time
has rendered Hare's deflagrator obsolete, but as Edgar F.
Smith has stated :

It is not less a proof of the merit of Hare's apparatus that
Faraday, in 1835, after having exhausted his ingenuity and
experience in perfecting the voltaic battery, found that Hare
had already, nearly twenty-five years before, accomplished all
that he had attempted, and with a noble frankness worthy of
all praise, he at once adopted Hare's instrument as embodying
the best results then possible.

The first electric furnace ever used 'promptly for
gotten and re-invented many years later* was also con
structed and employed by Hare. He obtained therewith
calcium carbide, phosphorus and graphite all substances
now manufactured in enormous quantities in modern electric
furnaces. He came before his proper time. Had he lived
a century later he would no doubt have entered the com
mercial field and revolutionised chemical industry. As it

SQME YOUNG AMERICAN CHEMISTS

was, he was appointed professor of chemistry in the University
of Pennsylvania in 1818, and continued to hand on the torch
of knowledge there for nearly thirty years. He died in 1858.

I should be wrong if I gave you the impression that all
young Americans are chemical wizards, and for this reason
it will be opportune for me to interpolate an anecdote about
one who, failing as a chemist, gained glory in a different
field.

James Abbott McNeill Whistler, as a youth, spent three
years at West Point Military Academy, but was discharged
therefrom for deficiency in chemistry. At his oral examina
tion he was asked to discuss the chemistry of silicon. Stand
ing at attention, he replied : * Silicon, sir, is a gas.' c That
will do, Mr Whistler, 3 said the professor, and the examina
tion was ended. Later on in life Whistler used to say : * If
silicon had been a gas, I would have been a major-general/
Instead of that, as you all know, he won his way against
intense opposition to international fame as an artist, the
greatest artist that America has ever produced. The
United States has not yet honoured any of its chemists on
its postage stamps, but a reproduction of one of Whistler's
best-known pictures, the portrait of his mother now hanging
in the Luxembourg Gallery in Paris, was used as a special
commemorative issue for * Mother's Day.'

My next ' real * chemist is Charles Martin Hall, born in
1863, the son of a minister in the village of Oberlin, Ohio.
Perhaps I can best introduce him to you through the good
offices of his teacher, Professor Jewett, who has provided us
with the following summary of his own great discovery
the discovery of a man :

When I went to Oberlin, on my return from four years*
teaching in Japan, there was a little boy about fourteen years
old who used to come to the chemical laboratory frequently to
buy a few cents' worth of glass tubing or test tubes or something
of that sort and go off with them. He would come again after
while to get some more things to work with.

204 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

Not knowing anything about the boy I made up my mind
that he would make a mark for himself some day because he
didn't spend all his time playing but was already investigating.
That boy was Charles M. Hall, the man who, at the age of
twenty-two, discovered the method of reducing aluminium from
its ores and making it the splendid metal that we now sec used
all over the world. Hall was an all-round student, but he did
have a special liking for science.

After he had entered college and was part way through the
regular course, I took him into my private laboratory and gave
him a place by my side- discussing his problem with him from
day to day.

Possibly a remark of mine in the laboratory one day led him
to turn his especial attention to aluminium. Speaking to my
students, I said that if any one should invent a process by which
aluminium could be made on a commercial scale, not only
would he be a benefactor to the world but would also be able to
lay up for himself a great fortune. Turning to a classmate,
Charles Hall said, * I'm going for that metal.' And he went
for it.

He tried various methods in vain, and finally turned his mind
to the idea that perhaps electricity would help get the metal out
erf" its ores. So he focused his attention on that process. I loaned
him what apparatus I had to spare, what batteries we could
develop. And I think that most of you who have seen an electric
battery would have laughed at the one we got up made as it
was out of all sorts of cups, tumblers and so on, with pieces of
carbon in them. But we finally got the current that was needed.
Soon after this he was graduated and took the apparatus to
his own home ; apparatus which he himself had made and
which I had loaned to him. He arranged a little laboratory in
the shed, continued his investigations and reported to me
frequently.

About six months later he came over to my office one morn
ing, and holding out his hollowed hand, said, ' Professor, I've
got it ! '^ There in the palm of his hand lay a dozen little globules
of aluminium, the first ever made by the electrolytic process in
this country. 1 This was the 23rd of February, 1886. After that
he developed his invention to its final great success.

1 These original globules the * crown jewels * of the aluminium industry
are now carefully preserved in an aluminium 'jewel chest * in the offices
of Ac Aluminum Company of America at Pittsburgh,

SOME YOUNG AMERICAN CHEMISTS 205

A few sentences from Hall's own account of his early
career, taken from an address which he made when he was
presented with the Perkin Medal in 1911, are also worth
recording :

My first knowledge of chemistry was gained as a schoolboy
at Oberlin, Ohio, from reading a book on chemistry which my
father studied in college in the forties, I still have the book,
published in 1841. It is minus the cover and the title-page, so
I do not know the author. It may be interesting now to see what
this book, published seventy years ago, says about aluminium :
* The metal may be obtained by heating chloride of aluminium
with potassium in a covered platinum or porcelain crucible and
dissolving out the salt with water. As thus prepared it is a gray
powder similar to platinum, but when rubbed in a mortar
exhibits distinctly metallic lustre. It fuses at a higher temperature
than cast-iron and in this state is a conductor of electricity but
a non-conductor when cold.'

Later I read about Deville's work in France, and found the
statement that every clay bank was a mine of aluminium, and
that the metal was as costly as silver. I soon began to think
of processes for making aluminium cheaply.

So this boy who, in order to make his battery-cells, had
to chop the wood and cast the zinc plates with his own
hands, dared to venture on an experiment in which Humphry
Davy failed, and perfected a process which had baffled
Wohler, Deville and many other world-renowned chemists
who had been busy upon aluminium over a period of nearly
half a century. The aluminium that Deville, improving
upon earlier methods by employing the cheaper metal
sodium in place of potassium for the reduction of aluminium
chloride, produced in 1854 cost 18 per pound, and the
world's annual output until 1885 was a few hundredweights
only. The metal existed simply as a specimen on museum
shelves, a chemical curiosity. Hall's fundamental discovery
was the fact that natural oxide of aluminium (bauxite) readily
dissolves in molten aluminium fluoride (cryolite), and that
the solution is a good conductor of electricity. By passing

206

GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

a strong current through the mass in an electric furnace,
therefore, molten aluminium is obtained at the cathode.
The form of apparatus used iron tanks, lined with a carbon
cathode, into which carbon anodes dip is illustrated in
the accompanying diagram. 1 What a complete transforma
tion this process has effected in the status of aluminium will
be evident when I tell you that the world's annual produc
tion of the metal is now approximately 1,500,000 tons, and
that its price has been lowered to less than eighteen pence
per pound.

Aluminium is no longer, indeed, a chemical curiosity,

FIG. 27 Manufacture of aluminium

but a household necessity ; Hall has presented modern
industry with a new metal. If all the aluminium produced
in Great Britain alone each year went into the manufacture
of aluminium kettles (only a minute fraction of it actually
does, of course) and if these kettles were placed in a line,
the line would stretch twenty times the distance from Land's
End to John o* Groats. In the United States, where a
considerably larger quantity of c aluminum * is made
annually, it would be possible to connect every large city,
from the Atlantic to the Pacific seaboards, with a complete
network of kettles. What useful purpose the kettles might
serve, arranged in this peculiar fashion, I cannot suggest,
but the information is interesting all the same. Much

* The molten ^Itumnium 15 tapped off from the floor of the cell as desired.

SOME YOUNG AMERICAN CHEMISTS 2O?

larger amounts of aluminium, in point of fact, are used in
the automobile and aeroplane industries ; without alu
minium the modern car and the modern plane could never
have been developed. Aluminium castings combine lightness
with strength, aluminium mouldings and panels combine
cheapness with beauty.

One of the most important of all the uses of aluminium,
however, is hidden from the general public, namely its
service as a medicine " or a * scavenger ' in the manu
facture of steel. When a small amount of aluminium (less
than i part in 1,000) is added to molten steel, it combines
with the gases dissolved therein and gives sound ingots free
from blowholes. Aluminium is a metal much more active
than iron, indeed, and can even combine most energetically
with oxygen held by iron in combination. This property
constitutes the principle of 6 thermite welding,* and also of
something about which the general public heard a great
deal during the Second World War, the thermite incen
diary bomb. In both cases a mixture of finely granulated
aluminium metal and iron oxide is ignited by means of a
fuse, and the resulting reaction furnishes sufficient heat to
raise the reduced steel to a temperature at which it is liquid.
By this method steel rails are welded together and large
castings, like propeller-shafts, when broken, can be mended.

It was very lucky for Charles Martin Hall that he suc
ceeded in making aluminium when he did ; had he waited
only a little longer, he would have been forestalled. By
another of those extraordinary coincidences to which you
will have grown accustomed in the course of this volume,
a second young man of twenty-two, Paul Heroult, made
precisely the same discovery in France a few weeks later.
A quarter of a century afterwards Heroult attended the
meeting in New York at which Hall was presented with
the Perkin Medal, and in extending his congratulations to
the recipient he narrated the following amusing story about
how he himself made his first acquaintance with aluminium :

2O8 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

I had a friend who since then became my partner, but for
the time being we were both c dead broke.' We had pawned
everything in sight and also other things which were not in
sight. Finally my partner had a bright idea. He brought from
home a stick of aluminium about six inches long, which was
valued very highly by his family as a personal souvenir of Sainte
Claire Deville. As we handed it to the pawnbroker, the latter
said : * What is that bar silver ? *

We said ; ' Better than that, that is aluminium.'

' Aluminium,' he said. ( What is that ? '

He weighed it in his hand and said : * Why 1 is that hollow ? *

We said : * No, that is aluminium and it is worth 120 francs
per kilo.'

After some thought he said : ' Well, I will give you two
francs for it.'

On a hot summer's day it was better than nothing and we
took the money with the firm intention of buying the stick back,
which we never did.

Maybe that was one of the reasons why, later on, I had to
make good and replace it.

The two young adventurers, unknown to each other,
proceeded to work out methods for the large-scale manu
facture of the metal on opposite sides of the Atlantic quite
independently, and for several years chemical industry was
buzzing with rumours that something new was coming.
What actually came at first, particularly as far as Hall was
concerned, was a long succession of patent suits. Big busi
ness had refused to finance him until success was assured,
now he was forced to defend himself against all kinds of
legal devices to deprive him of the fruits of his labour. In
1893 Judge William Howard Taft, subsequently President
of the United States, ruled :

Hall's process is a new discovery, a revolution in the art.
Hall was a pioneer, and is entitled to the advantages which that
fact gives him in the patent law.

Appeals against this decision in America, nevertheless, did
not end until 1903. The international difficulty was finally

Irving Langmuir In Paris, 1893

Irving Langmulr showing his nephews how to use
a Slide-rule

4 What next ? ' asked Edison

On being shown, shortly before his death, some of the latest

apparatus of scientific research by Dr Langmuir in the laboratories

of the General Electric Company at Schenectady, even Thomas

Edison is said to have exclaimed, * What next ? '

SOME YOUNG AMERICAN CHEMISTS 2Og

straightened out in an eminently satisfactory manner by
assigning the American rights of the invention to Hall and
the European to Heroult.

The long struggle had its effect upon Hall. He could
be a shrewd business man where his just rights were involved,
but he had naturally, like Perkin, a very modest and retiring
disposition, and in later life he remained secluded from the
public eye as much as possible, interesting himself chiefly
in music and art. On his death in 1914 his twin 3 Heroult,
died in the same year he left his entire estate for the advance
ment of education in America and the Orient. His own
college at Oberlin received one-third, between twelve and
fifteen million dollars. A life-size aluminium statue of the
young dreamer planning his great discovery now stands in
the chemical laboratory there, and it will interest you to
compare this imaginative effort with an etching, also from
Oberlin. 1 When that etching was made Hall was forty-
three ; he remained a boy, in appearance at any rate, all
his life.

Some of you may feel that a discovery like Hall's could
not be duplicated today, that by now we must know all
there is to know about the manufacture of metals and the
uses to which metals can be applied. Nothing of the sort ;
there is still plenty to be done. Look at the metals of the
rare earths, which we ran into during our final inspection
of Mendelejeff Court. These are actually the big brothers
of aluminium, but the difficulties of separating them from
each other still hold them back from definite employment.
* Mischmetall,* a mixture of them obtained from the natural
ore, is a better reducing agent than aluminium itself, but
its only use so far is in patent cigarette-lighters. Some day
some young chemist will devise a cheap method of separating
the rare earth elements, and then they also will cease to be
museum curiosities and enter the service of mankind.

Will you allow me, at this point, to tell another personal

1 These are both reproduced in the picture facing page 201,

2IO GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

anecdote? In December 1925 I was asked to deliver a
lecture at the University of Minnesota on c The Rare Earths.'
Arriving at Minneapolis, I purchased a local newspaper,
and saw to my horror a headline therein : * Kendall to speak
on Rare Herbs * ! The reporter went on to say that I was
a noted authority on rare herbs, that I had written a book
on rare herbs, and that I had discovered several new rare
herbs all of which, of course, is untrue. The title of my
talk, it seemed, had been given to the Press from the uni
versity over the telephone, and had been slightly confused
in transmission. When I entered the lecture theatre I found
an enthusiastic audience which appeared to me, in my
embarrassment, to be mainly composed of botanists, phar
macists and bootleggers, all waiting to get the latest dope
on rare herbs. I was undecided how to start, until I remem
bered that one of the rare earth metals is named erbium.
No Englishman is ever supposed to be capable of sounding
an aspirate in the United States, so I concentrated my
remarks on erbium for three-quarters of the lecture and then,
when I ran out of material, switched to terbium and ytter
bium. When all was over, I believe, some of my listeners
were still uncertain as to whether I had been speaking
about rare earths or rare herbs.

Hall himself, in his youth, almost succeeded in bringing
the most refractory of all metals, tungsten, to heeL His
old professor, Jewett, relates as follows :

At one time Hall suggested that he and I should undertake
to find a better material than carbon for the fiber in the incan
descent lamp. He concluded that tungsten would answer. It
was agreed that I should furnish the materials and that he should
da the work in my private laboratory. Here he had his own
desk, which he continued to use during his senior year. He
worked with tungsten compounds for a season and finally found
one which we thought might answer the purpose. When a fiber
made of this tungsten was subjected to as strong a current as the
laboratory afforded it glowed brightly for an instant or two,
then snapped asunder. It was planned to take up the subject
later, but drcumstances would not permit*

SOME YOUNG AMERICAN CHEMISTS

If Hall had stuck to tungsten our modern tungsten-
filament lamp might have arrived twenty years earlier !
And the mention of the electric lamp brings me to the last
of my young American heroes Irving Langmuir.

Irving Langmuir was born at Brooklyn on 31 January
1 88 1 , and is still active in scientific research. Active is
altogether too mild a term to use in connection with Lang
muir, but it must serve in default of a better. I myself have
been privileged to count him among my friends nearly forty
years, so I must be careful what I say about him here.
Whatever the calendar may say, Irving Langmuir still
retains all the zeal of youth.

His father, a business man of Scots descent with four
sons, of whom Irving was the third, accumulated a com
fortable fortune and lost it all in a mining venture. During
his last six years he directed the European agency of the
New York Life Insurance Company in Paris, and Irving
went to French schools for a time. Even before he left
America, however, his elder brother Arthur had aroused
his interest in chemistry to a point where he was emulating
the exploits of Davy and of Faraday, 1 as the following stories
demonstrate. Arthur is the narrator :

I was a student of chemistry at Tanytown, N.Y., in 1887,
and one of my first preparations was chlorine gas, which fascinated
me, and I gloried in its smell. Walking home one night I carried
a 4-oz. stoppered bottle of the gas and at the family fireside
offered it to Irving, aged six, to smell. In his enthusiasm for
science he did not smell but inhaled the contents of the bottle
and nearly strangled then and there. Fortunately pneumonia
did not develop, but my father closed down hard on any more
chemistry. StM, after a few years, chemistry gradually crept
back, and Irving and I performed many an experiment, mostly
of a spectacular variety.

We were particularly intrigued with iodide of nitrogen, which
is really a domestic explosive, for it can be made readily from
iodine and household ammonia and explodes when touched,

1 See pages 12 and 40

212 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

making a loud noise and a purplish smoke with a choking stench.
Yet it is relatively harmless. We astonished many a cat by
dropping wood smeared with iodide in his vicinity. In fact, in
those days almost anywhere in the house one was liable to run
into nitrogen iodide, as our baby brother Dean discovered one
day, while running his hand along the window-sill.

The rigid discipline of French instructors, naturally,
did not suit a boy of this stamp, and Irving himself has
confessed that, until he was fourteen, he * hated school, and
did poorly at it/ His mother, writing home to a friend in
1893, savs :

Irving thinks exercise is of much more importance than his
studies, and I guess it is just as well, for his brain is too active
and I really think if he studied vigorously we could not send
him to school. His brain is working like an engine all the time,
and it is wonderful to hear him talk with Herbert on scientific
subjects. Herbert says he fairly has to shun electricity for the
child gets beside himself with enthusiasm and shows such in
telligence on the subject that it fairly scares him.

And Arthur adds : c When he could not find Herbert,
Irving would back up his eight-year-old brother Dean into
a corner and talk science to him until he cried for help/
I should like to testify here that my sympathies are entirely
with brother Dean. I have frequently felt like calling for
help myself under similar circumstances.

In 1895 Irving himself suggested to his father that he
be transferred to an American school. His brother Arthur
had just completed his research work for his doctor's degree
at Heidelberg, and was starling out as an industrial chemist.
Many years later, at a dinner tendered to Irving on the eve
of his sailing to Sweden to receive the Nobel Prize in chem
istry, Arthur told the following story of the young schoolboy :

In 1896 I became engaged to a charming young lady, whom
Irving had loved and admired for several years. Ramsay and
Lord Rayleigh had just published the fact that ordinary air
contained an unknown and chemically stagnant and uninterest-

SOME YOUNG AMERICAN CHEMISTS 213

ing dement, argon. In 1904 each of these men was awarded
the Nobel Prize, just as Irving is winning it in 1932. I was telling
my brother what I knew about this discovery and then changed
the subject to what was uppermost in my mind, saying, * Irving,
do you know that I am going to marry Alice Dean ? * His reply
was * Oh/ a pause, and then, e But, Arthur, you were telling me
about argon,' It was tVn's very element, this lazy argon, which
Irving seventeen years later used as the ideal constituent of his
gas-filled tungsten lamps.

Once more I wish to add my own testimony that it is
still impossible to switch Irving away from science when
he has got Ms teeth into a topic, however artfully one
may try.

The following year, Arthur having married, Irving went
to live in his brother's home while attending school in
Brooklyn. He fitted up a laboratory in the fourth-storey
flat and learned analysis under Arthur's tutelage. One
evening a strontium nitrate red fire which they set off on
the window-siH brought rattEng up on the cobblestones, to
their great surprise, two fire-engines, a hook and ladder,
and a salvage corps. At school he did no chemistry, since
he was obviously too much of a handful for his teachers,
but he came across a book on the calculus and mastered it
in six weeks. Then, in 1899, he entered Columbia University,
tafcmg a degree course in metallurgy because the chemistry
curriculum did not contain sufficient physics and mathe
matics. Graduating in 1903, he proceeded to Gottingen
to conduct research work in physical chemistry under
Walther Nernst. He was at this time still undecided regard
ing his right career, as the following extract from a letter
from his brother Herbert will show :

The whole matter resolves itself into the question whether
you have, or have not, exceptional ability in pure science research.
If you simply have a well-grounded knowledge and a thorough
efficiency, you should certainly go right into the business of
chemistry, where you can be of most use to yourself and every
body else. But if you are the exceptional man, it is, in my
opinion, your duty to be one of the pioneer scholars in America.

(99) *

214 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

The time has come when this country must have her distinctive
scholars* If they do not get great honour now, they surely will
by the time you have done anything particularly worthy.

The future was to prove that he was so exceptional that
he could have it both ways. The best academic position
that he could obtain on his return to America with a doctor's
degree in 1906 was that of instructor in chemistry at Stevens
Institute, Hoboken. In 1908, however, he attended a
scientific meeting at Schenectady, and met an old Columbia
classmate, Colin G. Fink, then on the staff of the General
Electric Company. Fink took him through the research,
laboratory there, and introduced him to various members
of the staff, including the genial and gifted director, Willis R.
Whitney. Langmuir saw that industrial research, as
organised under Whitney's far-sighted direction, could be
just as fascinating and fundamental as research in pure
chemistry. The following summer he accepted an invita
tion to spend part of his vacation at Schenectady, fully
expecting to return to teaching in the autumn. Forty years
later he was at Schenectady still.

Whitney did not assign Langmuir at first to any definite
problem, he simply suggested that he should browse around
and become familiar with what the other men were doing.
Langmuir found that certain of the staff were experiencing
serious difficulties in the development of the new tungsten
lamps. Tungsten was then just corning into use as a fila
ment in electric-lamp bulbs, the extraordinarily high melting-
point of the metal (3370 Centigrade) making it an ideal
material for that purpose. One very troublesome question
how to convert the infusible powder obtained by reduction
into very fine wire had recently been solved in the General
Electric laboratory by W. D. Coolidge, but the filaments
still would not stand up properly in the vacuum bulbs of
that period ; after a short time they became brittle and the
lamps failed.

It struck Langmuir that the tungsten wire might contain

SOME YOUNG AMERICAN CHEMISTS 215

gaseous impurities, which were driven out by the heat of
the current, and he suggested to Dr Whitney that he would
like to heat various samples of wire in a high vacuum and
measure the quantities of gas expelled. Whitney told him
to go ahead. He did, and the very first results he obtained
appeared to be utterly preposterous in two days a filament
produced 7,000 times its own volume of gas and there seemed
to be no likelihood that the gas evolution would ever stop.

* Where can all this gas come from ? * Langmuir asked
himself. Evidently not from the wire, and he gradually
grew so absorbed in following up thfs topic and other
theoretical points that arose in the course of its investigation
that he never did get back to the practical problem of the
wire itself. Other people have since discovered how to make
tungsten more ductile and so to overcome the fragility of the
filament ; curiosity led Langmuir into much more remote
fields. Listen to his own confession :

During these first few years, while I was having such a good
time satisfying my curiosity and publishing scientific papers on
chemical reactions at low pressures, I frequently wondered
whether it was fair that I should spend my whole time in an
industrial organisation on such purely scientific work, for I
confess I didn't see what applications could be made of it, nor
did I even have any applications in mind. Several times I talked
the matter over with Doctor Whitney, saying that I could not
tell where this work was going to lead us. He replied that it
was not necessary, as far as he was concerned, that it should lead
anywhere. He would like to see me continue working along
any fundamental lines that would give us more information in
regard to the phenomena taking place in incandescent lamps,
and I should feel myself perfectly free to go ahead on any such
lines that seemed of interest to me. For nearly three years I
worked in this way with several assistants before any real applica
tion was made of any of my work. In adopting this broad-
minded attitude Doctor Whitney showed himself to be a real
pioneer in the new type of modern industrial research.

Whitney was indeed wise in allowing the young inves
tigator so much rope, as later events showed. Langmuir's

(969) I5a

2l6 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

first discovery, that the gas released in such large amounts
was chiefly hydrogen, originating from the water vapour
adsorbed on the inner surface of the glass bulb and from
the vaseline on the ground-glass joint of the vacuum system,
led ultimately to his development of that vast improvement,
the mercury vacuum pump. For the time being, however,
he frankly admitted that he could not produce a better
vacuum, and proposed instead to study the problem by
deliberately making matters worse, by admitting various
gases in varying amounts into the bulb. This looked per
fectly absurd from a practical point of view, since every
body knew that a high vacuum was necessary to avoid
heat losses from the filament, which reduced its brightness,
but again Whitney told him to go ahead and spoil the
vacuum.

He found that when hydrogen was introduced into a
lamp bulb the heat losses at high temperatures were simply
enormous, far greater than could be accounted for under any
known theory. Patient research proved that this was due
to the fact that the glowing filament dissociated hydrogen
molecules into atomic hydrogen, a process which absorbs a
tremendous quantity of heat. This discovery, after fifteen
years, was given an important practical application in the
atomic hydrogen torch. In this torch, compared with which
Hare's original oxy-hydrogen blowpipe is a mere toy, the
hydrogen gas passes through an electric arc and is converted
to atomic hydrogen just before it burns. The temperature
produced transcends that attainable by any other means, and
Langmuir's atomic hydrogen torch is therefore particularly
valuable in welding highly refractory metals.

The * blackening 3 of lamp bulbs in course of use, with
a consequent rapid decrease in their efficiency, was con
sidered when Langmuir started his work to be due to the
impossibility of securing a perfect vacuum, and he therefore
expected to find that the introduction of gases into the bulb
would promote such blackening. Nothing of the kind
occurred, except in the case of water vapour, where a specific

The future King Edward the Seventh

at the age of eighteen
After the drawing by George Richmond

SOME YOUNG AMERICAN CHEMISTS 21 7

chemical reaction takes place. Other gases, such as nitrogen
and hydrogen, actually hindered the slow evaporation of
atoms of tungsten from the white-hot filament. In the
absence of gas, tungsten atoms shooting off from the surface
of the filament travel straight on until they strike the inner
surface of the bulb and stick there. But if gaseous molecules
are present in quantity, an atom of tungsten leaving the
filament is almost certain to bump into a gas molecule
immediately, whereupon it rebounds right back on to the
filament again.

This epoch-making discovery resulted in the supersession
of the old style of vacuum bulb by the newer * nitrogen-
filled lamp.' Later, when it transpired that argon, one of
the inert gases present in the atmosphere, works even better
than nitrogen in suppressing blackening, the * argon-filled
lamp ' was introduced. Practically all of the electric-lamp
bulbs manufactured nowadays are of the gas-filled type, and
the value of Langmuir's invention of this new type of illumina
tion has been truly astounding. According to Dr Whitney,
it has reduced by 50 per cent the cost of the light we buy,
and even in 1928 it was effecting a saving in America alone
of* one million dollars a night/ This nightly million dollars,
of course, has not found its way into the pockets of Langmuir
and his associates, neither has it all gone into big dividends,
although no doubt the Board of the General Electric have had
ample reason to bless Dr Whitney's indulgence towards what
most directors would call * wastefiil and unnecessary research/
The principal beneficiaries have been the general public.

Not at once, however, was the gas-filled lamp a com
mercial possibility ; the difficulty of cutting down the heat
losses inevitably taking place therein, by the conductance
of heat through the gas, first had to be surmounted. The
c squirrel-cage ' type of filament then in vogue (see Fig. 28)
is not raised to a sufficiently high temperature for it to glow
brilliantly in a gas-filled lamp unless the current is con
siderably increased, and this involves a much larger bill to
the consumer. The heat loss may be minimised by using

GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

a very thick filament, but this is not practicable except in
lamps of very high candle-power. The problem was finally
solved by a most ingenious device. The straight filament
was abandoned in favour of a closely wound spiral of very
fine wire, which acts with regard to heat loss as if it were
a thick wire with the external dimensions of the spiral.

This ' single-coiled tungsten filament ' (see Figs. 29 and
30) held the field in electric lighting for twenty years.
Later, however, it was displaced by a further development
the * coiled-coil filament.' Here the coil is coiled again

FIG. 28 * Squirrel-cage '
vacuum lamp

FIG. 29 Modern gas-
filled lamp

upon itself, so that the final form approximates to a
cylindrical wire of far greater diameter (see Fig. 31), and
the efficiency of the lamp is thus increased by another 10
to 20 per cent. Just look through a strong magnifying-glass
at one of the ordinary 4O-watt lamps that you use now in
your home, and marvel at the skill shown in its manufac
ture. The filament of ductile tungsten must first be drawn
down gradually, through diamond dies pierced with per
fectly round holes, until it is as fine as a spider's web. One
of the girls who does the work has said : c It's like threading
a wire you can't see through a hole that isn't there. 5 This
minute thread must then be coiled, and the coil coiled again,
with such precision that not a single one of the 3,773 turns

SOME YOUNG AMEHICAN CHEMISTS
in the final filament touches its neighbour, although the
space between is less than the thickness of cigarette paper.
And the whole tiny structure, in use, must remain white-hot
for 1,000 hours without breakage or distortion. It looks as
if there is not much room left for future improvements. And
yet, with men like Langmuir still active, who knows ?

I am sorry that space does not permit me to describe to
you his later work (for which he was awarded the Nobel
Prize in chemistry in 1932) in detail. I am particularly
interested in all that he has done myself, because in a very
peculiar sense I can claim to be his scientific grandfather.
As you have heard, living's first instructor in chemistry was

FIG. 30 Single-coil filament FIG. 31 Coiled-coil filament

(greatly enlarged) (greatly enlarged)

his elder brother Arthur, and this same Arthur was a student
of mine at Columbia University. Lest you should be puzzled
as to my antiquity, I must hasten to add that this was after
Arthur retired from chemical industry and had decided that
now was the time for him to find out what was on the
carpet in pure chemistry. Insatiable curiosity is evidently
a characteristic of the Langmuir clan. To Arthur, as to
Irving, chemistry was not work, it was a great game. And
Arthur took a certain malicious glee in the statement :
e Irving has won a great list of prizes, but there is one prize
that will be for ever beyond his grasp/ That prize is one
which Arthur himself initiated the American Chemical Society
award of a thousand dollars yearly to young men under the
age of thirty inspired by Irving's career as a lover of
fundamental research without thought of material reward.

22O GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

Irving himself is not always the austere scientist that the
volume of his achievements might suggest him to be ; he
realises and preaches the value of hobbies. He has always
been an ardent mountaineer, and used to think nothing of
ascents in the Alps where, 4 while holding on by his finger
tips, it was necessary to swing out into space, with a drop
of 500 feet below him, in order to locate a foothold for a
further advance/ To one who has climbed to such chemical
heights as he has done, the conquest of the Matterhorn must
have seemed child's play.

He has also outrivalled Faraday (see p. 59) as a walker ;
one day in the Harz Mountains, ' just for fun ' at the sugges
tion of a German friend, he did fifty-two miles, to the summit
of the Brocken and back. After accompanying him for
thirty-eight miles, his friend gave up !

Until recently, too, he used to pilot his own aeroplane.
He has watched a total eclipse of the sun at an altitude of
9,000 feet, and he has fraternised with Colonel Lindbergh
on scientific observations. Rumour says that he even dared
to tell Lindbergh that he preferred ski-ing to flying. Whether
that is true or not, it is certain that one of the main uses he
made of his plane each winter was to locate the best ski-ing
slopes in the neighbouring Adirondacks from the air, and
then take his friends to ski on them. Skate-sailing on Lake
George was another of his favourite winter occupations.

And to prove that, youthful himself, he still enjoys making
contacts with youth, let it be mentioned, in conclusion, that
he organised the first troop of Boy Scouts in Schenectady.

Thus far in this chapter I have restricted myself to North
America. Allow me, before I finish, to tell another personal
story about a young South American chemist.

Shortly before I left Columbia my colleague Colin G.
Fink the very man who captured Langmuir for the General
Electric, now returned to the academic fold as a professor
of electrochemistry had a research student from the
Argentine working with him on the development of what

SOME YOUNG AMERICAN CHEMISTS 221

was then an entirely new field, chromium-plating. This
student also attended one of my lecture courses, but found
his research so interesting that he did no work at all for me,
and at the end of the session I was forced to refuse him
a class certificate. With a wicked flash in his eye he told
me, c You will be sorry for this 1 ' (Later on he explained
to me that all he meant was that I should regret my mis-
judgment of his scientific abilities, but I did not know that
at the time.)

Anyway, I forgot all about him for a week. Then, very
late one night, while I was working alone in my laboratory
on the sixth floor of Havemeyer Hall, my door was suddenly
thrown open and there stood c South American Joe/ flourish
ing a long glittering stiletto. Naturally I was taken aback,
but, remembering the old school tie and the duty of every
Englishman to die game, I braced my shoulders and walked
smilingly towards him. To my relief he smiled back and,
twirling the handle of the stiletto towards me, said : * I have
a little present for you, Professor ! ' It was a chromium-
plated paper-knife that I now keep on my desk, one of the
first pieces of chromium-plating ever made, still as bright
today as it was that evening more than twenty-five years ago.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Chemistry in America. Edgar F. Smith, 1914
' The Story of Aluminum.' Harry N. Holmes, Journal of Chemical
Education, 1930

* The PerHn Medal Award. 3 Journal of Industrial and Engineering

Chemistry, 1911

* My Brother Irving.' A. C. Langmuir, Industrial and Engineering

Chemistry (News Edition}, 1932

c Langmuir's Work.' W. R. Whitney, Industrial and Engineering
Chemistry, 1928

* Irving Langmuir. 5 Katherine B. Blodgett, Journal of Chemical

Education, 1933

CHAPTER X
A YOUNG ROYAL CHEMIST

IN earlier chapters I have had occasion more than once to
mention the interest displayed by the Prince Consort in
science, an interest which led, in point of fact, to the planning
of the Great Exhibition of 1851. You have read how he
occupied the chair at the opening of a series of lectures on
* Metals ' delivered by the immortal Michael Faraday at
the Royal Institution in 1855, with his young sons the Prince
of Wales (afterwards King Edward VII) and Prince Alfred
(later Duke of Edinburgh) on either side of him, as shown
in the picture facing page 72. You have read how he was
one of the prime movers in establishing the Royal College
of Chemistry at South Kensington in 1845, an< ^ h w Ge
himself engaged one of Europe's most distinguished chemists
to direct its destinies. Now I want to narrate, in my final
chapter, how one of his sons became a chemist.

This royal chemist was Albeit Edward, Prince of Wales.
After he had listened to Faraday's series of lectures he wrote
a letter to him from Windsor Castle, dated 1 6 January 1856,
as follows ;

M. FARADAY, Esq.,

Dear Sir, I am anxious to thank you for the advantage I have
derived from attending your most interesting Lectures. Their
subject, I know very well, is of great importance, and I hope
to follow the advice you gave us of pursuing it beyond the Lecture
Room, and I can assure you that I shall always cherish with
great pleasure the recollection of having been assisted in my
early studies in Chemistry by so distinguished a man.

Believe me, Dear Sir, Yours truly,

ALBERT EDWARD

The hope that the Prince of Wales expressed of pursuing
chemistry beyond the, lecture-room was -gratified three years

A YOUNG ROYAL CHEMIST

subsequently, when he was sent by his father to Scotland to
receive practical instruction from Lyon Playfair, at that time
professor of chemistry in the University of Edinburgh. Why,
it may be asked, did the Prince Consort select Playfair for
this distinction ? Playfair had been an ardent ally of the
Prince Consort in organising the Great Exhibition. For
eight years he held an official position in the Prince's house
hold, and was not only his scientific adviser but his intimate
friend. Later in life he entered Parliament as member for
that now defunct constituency, the combined Universities
of Edinburgh and St Andrews. There he sponsored an
agitation that led to the adoption of s open halfpenny letters,
afterwards known as postcards,' was promptly punished by
being made Postmaster-General in Gladstone's Government
of 1873, and ended as Baron Playfair of St Andrews in the
House of Lords. 1 He has recorded in his reminiscences that
when he went to Windsor to kiss Queen Victoria's hand on
his appointment as Postmaster-General, the Queen made
the remark : * How much he would have been pleased.'
There was no need, added Playfair, to conjecture who he
was. But I must return to the Prince of Wales, a con
temporary portrait of whom is shown facing page 216.

At Playfair's suggestion the Prince's programme of work
consisted of laboratory study of the chemical principles upon
which manufacturing industry depends, followed by excur
sions to large plants to see those principles in operation. It
was while the Prince was a pupil in Playfair's laboratory
that the following incident occurred :

The Prince and Playfair were standing near a cauldron con
taining lead which was boiling at white heat.

1 His third wife was an American lady, and he spent so much time in
America during the last twenty years of his life that, as his biographer Wemyss
Reid remarks, * he almost became a citizen of the United States.' He was
an intimate friend of Longfellow and Oliver Wendell Holmes. It was largely
due to work done behind the scenes by this amateur politician that the Vene
zuelan boundary dispute between President Cleveland and Lord Salisbury in
1896 did not lead to war.

224 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

4 Has your Royal Highness any faith in science ? ' said
Playfair.

* Certainly,* replied the Prince.

Playfair then carefully washed the Prince's hand with ammonia
to get rid of any grease that might be on it.

* Will you now place your hand in this boiling metal, and
ladle out a portion of it ? ' he said to his distinguished pupil.

* Do you tell me to do this ? * asked the Prince.

* I do, J replied Playfair. The Prince instantly put his hand
into the cauldron, and ladled out some of the boiling lead with
out sustaining any injury. It is a well-known scientific fact that
the human hand, if perfectly cleansed, may be placed uninjured
in lead boiling at white heat, the moisture of the skin protecting
it under these conditions from any injury. Should the lead be
at a perceptibly lower temperature, the effect would, of course,
be very different. It requires, however, courage of no common
order for a novice to try such an experiment, even at the bidding
of a man so distinguished in science as was Playfair.

That is the official story, as related by Playfair's biographer,
Wemyss Reid ; the tale handed down by tradition in the
Edinburgh laboratories runs rather differently. Playfair
used to perform the boiling-lead experiment every year in
his chemistry lecture course, and arranged a special private
demonstration for the Prince of Wales. No sooner, however,
had the professor put his carefully washed hand into the
white-hot metal than his royal pupil, without any previous
preparation, placed his own beside it ! Fortunately the
daring experimenter did not possess either a dry or a greasy
skin, and therefore suffered no harm, but Playfair's con
sternation may be imagined.

Which is the correct version of the incident ? Nobody
can say for certain, nevertheless I incline to believe that it
was not respect for his professor, but uncontrollable scientific
curiosity, that impelled the Prince to make the plunge. In
certain details the official story is undoubtedly inaccurate,
for it would be quite impossible to put one's hand right
into the cauldron, as stated, without grave risk of injury.
The precise technique of the c royal experiment * had been

A YOUNG ROYAL CHEMIST 225

forgotten in Edinburgh after Playfair's departure, but I was
lucky enough to rediscover it in 1938, when I was called to
deliver the Christmas Lectures at the Royal Institution,
While rehearsing the experiments therefor, I happened to
remark to Mr Green, the chief assistant in the laboratory,
what a pity it was that I could not include the boiling-lead
experiment, since no-one knew exactly how to do it now
adays. Mr Green replied : c I know ; I did it for Sir James
Dewar in 1912.' Sir James Dewar (page 84) had been
Playfair's assistant at Edinburgh in his youth, so the chain
was complete and the experiment was duly repeated. A
picture of my daughter Jean, participating in its perform
ance, faces page 224.

You will note from the main part of this picture that the
cauldron has been removed from the furnace, which stands
in the background, and is being gradually tilted. The hands
are then passed slowly, with fingers apart, through the white-
hot stream of metal pouring from the cauldron, as shown
in the inset in the right-hand upper corner. When I perform
the experiment nowadays, in place of the cumbrous gas
furnace previously employed a true instrument of torture
which makes the lecture-room very hot and stuffy, and
muffles the speaker with its roar I am able to use, through
the generous co-operation of Professor Hay, of the Royal
Technical College, Glasgow, a compact electric furnace
which can be tilted with the cauldron still inside. The lead
can thus be kept close to its boiling temperature approxi
mately 1700 Centigrade or 3000 Fahrenheit until the
actual moment when it comes into contact with the hands,
and all danger of a burn is removed. The experiment under
these new conditions has not the same medieval smack, but
it is certainly more comfortable for all concerned.

The Prince Consort has a worthy successor today in the
person of the Duke of Edinburgh. He, like his great-great
grandfather, is indeed an active patron of science, as he
demonstrated beyond doubt in his presidential address to

226 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

the British Association for the Advancement of Science at
Edinburgh in 1951. This address, entitled * The British
Contribution to Science and Technology in the Past Hundred
Years/ is largely, as the Duke emphasised in his introductory
remarks, the story of the fulfilment of the Prince Consort's
hopes.

Among the outstanding British contributions to the
advancement of science during the last century singled out
for mention in the course of the address are several discussed
in this book for example, the discovery of mauve by
Perkin, the development of X-ray analysis by the two
Braggs, and the work of Moseley on X-ray spectra but
the Duke shrewdly noted that the modern development of
team research has made it truer than ever that e it is
quite exceptional for the credit of a great advance to
belong to one man or even to one country, although it
will always require the flash of inspiration to weld the
links into the chain.' His final paragraphs may be quoted
in full:

Progress in almost every form of human activity depends
upon the continued efforts of scientists. The nation's wealth
and prosperity are governed by the rapid application of science
to its industries and commerce. The nation's workers depend
upon science for the maintenance and improvement in their
standard of health, housing and food. Finally superiority or
even our ability to survive in war is a direct measure of the
excellence and capacity of the scientific team.

This team of research workers and engineers has a dual
responsibility, one for its work and the other as informed citizens,
and it can only fulfil its proper functions if its members have
a sound general education as well as a thorough training
in science. It is no less important that the people who
control the scientific machine, both laymen and scientists,
should have a proper understanding and appreciation of what
science has grown into and its place among the great forces of
the world.

Ladies and Gentlemen, it is clearly our duty as citizens to
see that science is used for the benefit of mankind. For, of what
use is science if man docs not survive ?

A YOUNG ROYAL CHEMIST 22 J

Before I conclude, however, I should like to comment
briefly upon the fact, dwelt upon by the Duke of Edinburgh
several times in the course of his address and stressed also
in this book on page 175, that the increasing complexity
and the cost of scientific research are making teamwork
more and more the rule. In this connection the Duke
remarked :

We need not repine at this, but it would be a disaster if the
individual inquirer working in his own laboratory were dis
couraged out of existence.

It would indeed be a disaster, in my opinion, although
Irving Langmuir, whose own achievements are discussed in
Chapter IX, has expressed the opinion to me more than
once that, in this twentieth century, little personal signi
ficance ought to be attached to any scientific discovery. He
argues that so many skilled teams of research workers arc
now following up every possible line of progress so inten
sively, utilising each other's published results all the time,
that it is practically a matter of chance who will first reach
that stage in the general investigation where shadow turns
to substance and a discovery of primary importance becomes
obvious. No individual is indispensable, for in the absence
of the actual discoverer somebody else would be certain to
reach the same conclusion a few weeks or a few months later.

No doubt there is a great deal of truth in what Irving
Langmuir remarks, but I am still unconvinced. The fact
that, at a certain period, a discovery is (as Hofmann said)
* floating in the air ' is not, after all, a new fact in the history of
chemistry. To the many examples of simultaneous and
independent discoveries described in this volume many more
might be added, such as the discovery of oxygen by Scheele
and Priestley, dating right back to the beginnings of our
science. Yet nobody thought of the application of nitrous
oxide to surgical operations for forty years after Davy (see
p. 14) ; nobody improved upon the laws of electricity for

228 GREAT DISCOVERIES BY YOUNG CHEMISTS

forty years after Faraday (see p. 55). There is no way of
testing the point, of course, but I ask quite seriously : c Would
anyone else have developed the principles of the gas-filled
lamp until forty years after Langmuir ? ' The reader, after
studying pages 214-18, is invited to give his own judgment.
In any case, hero-worship is certain to persist in science,
as in other fields. That such hero-worship is, in general,
amply justified will, I trust, be admitted by all who read
this volume.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Memoirs and Correspondence of Lyon Playfair. Wemyss Reid, 1899
* The British Contribution to Science and Technology in the

past Hundred Years.' H.RJL the Duke of Edinburgh,

The Advancement of 'Science, 1951

INDEX

ALUMINIUM 2049
Aniline 74
Anions 88
Anode 58
Anschutz 81-90
Argon 213, 217
Armstrong 133
Arrhenius 127-36
Aston 160-1

Atomic bombardment 172
Atomic energy 1 75-9
Atomic hydrogen 216
Atomic numbers 162
Atomic weights 141
Auxochromes 96

BACHE 62

Balard 101, 141-2

Becquerel 166, 168

Beddoes 9, 10, 16, 186

Benzene 52, 94-5

Berring 85-6

Berzelius 22

Biot 1 08-9

Black i, 181-92

Blowpipe, 200-2

Bohr 159, 162

Boiling-lead experiment 2235

Boltzmann 132

Borodin 147-^8

Boyle 140

Bragg, Sir Lawrence 137

Bragg, Sir William 137

Bromine 142

Brown, Crum 83-6, 138

Butylene 73

CALEDON JADE GREEN 78

Candle flame 66

Cannizzaro 80, 147

Capillary attraction 64

Capital experiment 22

Carlisle 17

Carmichael 186-9, I 9 1 ^

Cathode 58

Cations 58

Chemical Journal, First 184-8

Chemical Societies 181-4, 200

Chemistry of a candle 64-8

Chlorine 22-3, ^8

Chromium plating 221

Chromophores 96

Cleve 131

Coleridge 7, 13, 17, 19

Conductivity, electrical 129, 136

Coolidge 214

Coumarin 70

Couper 81-90

Crookes 71, 169

Crystal structure 136-8

Curie, Irene 172-3

Curie, Marie 16472

Curie, Pierre 166-70

DALTON 30, 141
DanieI162

Davy 3-32, 37~44> 47-5*
Davy lamp 25-8, 44
Debus 83-4
Deflagratpr 202
De La Rive 43
De La Roche 37
Deuterons 173
Deville 205, 208
De Vries 1245
Dewar 49, 84, 225
Dextrose 105
Diamond 137
Dobbin 81
Dobereiner 142
Double refraction 103
Dulong 40
Dumas 31, 88, 101
Dyes 74-8

EDINBURGH, DUKE OF 225-7
Electric furnace 202
Electric lamps 214-19
Electrochemistry, law of 58
Electrodes 58
Electrolysis 58
Electrolytes 58, 129
Electro-magnetism 46
Electrometer 166

230

Electrons 159, 168
Elements 140-80
Ethylenc 73

FARABAY 24, 31, 34-68, 69
Fermentation no, 191
Fmk 214
fire-damp 25
Franklin 56
Friedlander 96

GALVANIC PHENOMENA 17
Garnett 17
Geigcr counter 169
Genius, types of 33-4
Germanium 153
Giddy 8
Gladstone 56
Graphic formulae 93, 96-7

HADFIELD 45

Hahn 175

Hall 203-11

Hare 200-3

Helium 156, 168

Henry 62

Heroult 207-9

Hofaiann 71

Human boay experiment 21

Huxley 2

Hydrogen 175

INDIGO 78

Inert gases 156
Iodine 25
Ions 58, 129
Irvine 88
Isotopes 161

IEWETT 203

Joliot 172-^3
Joliot-Gurie, Irene 172-3

REKULE 81, 90-8, 116
Kehrin 134
Kohlrausch 132
Kolbe 121

LADENBURG87

Laevulose 105
Langmuir 211-20

"LftTitharmm 157

Laughing gas 15
Laurent 101-2
Lavoisier i, 140, 188-91
LeBel 114
Licben87
Lkbig 71, 90, 142

INDEX

Lippmann 166, 168
Liquefaction of gases 49
LyeH 60

MACLEAN 200
Mauve 74-7, 96
Maxwell 55
McKie 189-91
Melbourne, Lord 56-7
MendelejefF 145-56, 165
Mercury vacuum pump 216
Meyer, Lothar 147, 153
Miner's safety-lamp 25-8, 44
Mitchill q, 200
MitscherHch 103, 124
Monastral Blue 78, 95, 97
Monkey formula 95
Mordants 76
Moseley 159-64

NEUTRONS 161, 172
Newlands 142-5
Nicholson 17
Nicol prism 103
Nitrogen chloride 40
Nitrogen iodide 211
Nitrous oxide 9, 12-16
Northmore 49

OCTAVES, LAW OF 143

Oersted 46

Osmosis 125

Osmotic pressure 125-6

Ostwald 33, 131-4* 196

Oxy-acetylene blowpipe 202

PACKING EFFECT 175-8

Para-tartaric acid 102

Paris, Dr 47

Pasteur 99-^114

Pasteurisation in

Peel, Sir Robert 56

Periodic system 149-53, 162-3

Perkin 69-79

Pfeffer 125

Phlogiston 9, 187-92, 199-200

Pitchblende 166

Planck 132

Playfair 83, 223-5 _

Pneumatic Institution 9

Polarimeter 104

Polarised light 103

Polonium 167

Potassium 21

Priestley 10, 199-200

Prince Consort 63, 71, 222-3

Prince of Wales (Edward VII) 222-4

INDEX

231

Protons 159
Prout 141

QUININE 72-4, 95-6

RACEMIC AGED 102
Radioactivity 164-74
Radium 167-71
Radon 169
Ramsay 145, 156, 181
Rare earths 157-8, 209-10
Robison 188-90
Rock-salt crystal 136
Roll and sausage formulae 93
Rope experiment 104-5
Royal Institution 17, 37, 53
Rumford 17, 195-6
Rutherford 159

SCHEELE 22, IO2

Scott, Sir Walter 29, 52

Sklodovska, Marie 164-72

Snapdragon 67

Sodium 21

Solutions 124-36

Southey 13

Spinthariscope 169

Stahl 187

Stas 141

Stephenson 28

Stereochemistry 119

Strassman 175

Structure of organic compounds 80-97

Sugar solutions 105, 125

TARTARIC ACIDS 102-9, 119-20
Tartrates, dextro- and laevo- 106

Taylor 134

Tetrahedra, mirror-image 1 18

Thermite 207

Thompson, Benjamin 195-6

Thomson, Sir J. J. 159

Thomson, Thomas 20

Toluidine 73

Tracer elements 173-4, 179

Transuranic dements 151

Triads 142

Tungsten 210, 214-15

Tyrian purple 96
URANIUM 166-9

VALENCE 144

Van't Hoff 114-^27, 132-4

Voltaic pile 17, 202

WALKER 119, 132-3, 155
Water gas 16
Watt, Gregory 8
Wheatstone 62
Whistler 203
Whitney 214-15
Williams 83
Winkler 153
Wislicenus 120-1
Wollaston 46, 51
Woodhouse 181, 199-200
Wordsworth 7, 29
Wurtz 1,87, 116

X-RAY C3RYSTAL ANALYSIS 157

X-ray spectra 161

CO

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