History of Chemistry, Volume 2 (of 2) From 1850 to 1910

Chemistry and physics are each complementary to the other: that region of inquiry in which they mutually overlap is known as _physical chemistry_. Its beginnings are practically...

The more obvious physical phenomena of gases were, of course, well known by the middle of the nineteenth century; and the so-called gaseous laws—the laws of Boyle, Dalton, and G...

In the preceding volume an attempt was made to outline the significant features in the development of chemistry, as an art and as a science, from the earliest times down to abou...

It has already been pointed out that the discovery by Gay Lussac, and independently by Dalton, that gases combine in simple proportions by volume, and that the volume of the gas...

The suggestions of Couper and Kekulé that an explanation of the properties of chemical compounds should be sought in the nature and mutual affinities of their constituent elemen...

_Argon_, _helium_, _krypton_, _neon_, and _xenon_ belong to the group of the so-called inactive elements, and constitute what are known as the rare gases of the atmosphere. The...

In its widest sense, the term “synthesis,” as used in organic chemistry, means the building-up of carbon compounds, either from their constituent elements or from groups of diff...

The first gropings in the search for light on the inner structure of molecular groupings may be said to date from Biot’s work on polarisation. In 1815 Biot, a pupil of Malus, ma...

In an anonymous essay “On the Relation between the Specific Gravities of Bodies in their Gaseous State and the Weights of their Atoms,” published in Thomson’s _Annals of Philoso...

Although the existence of the element _fluorine_ was surmised as far back as 1771, when Scheele first recognised that the product of the action of oil of vitriol upon fluor-spar...

In 1850 the number of substances generally recognised as chemical elements, in the sense in which that term was first employed by Boyle, was sixty-two. Two members—viz., the _pe...

Chemical formulæ, from the time of Berzelius onwards, have been regarded as rational expressions—that is, they serve to represent the relations and analogies of the substance th...

ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY SINCE 1850 171 Molecular volumes of liquids. Nature of solution. Van ’t Hoff’s application of the gas laws to phenomena of solution. Osm...

THE MOLECULAR THEORY OF GASES 79 Interdependence of the gaseous laws. Kinetic theory of gases: Bernoulli, Waterston, Clausius, Maxwell, Boltzmann, Schmidt, Graham. Gaseous diffu...

STATE OF CHEMISTRY IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 1 Introductory. Some Founders of Modern Chemistry: Liebig, Wöhler, Dumas. Rapid Extension of Organic Chemistry after 1...

ATOMS AND MOLECULES: ATOMIC WEIGHTS AND EQUIVALENTS 61 Hypothesis of Avogadro. Stanislao Cannizzaro. Determination of molecular weights. Applicability of law of Dulong and Petit...

ORGANIC SYNTHESIS: CONDENSATION: SYNTHESIS OF VITAL PRODUCTS 152 Use of specific condensing reagents. Carbon suboxide. Artificial preparation of naturally occurring substances....

THE CHEMICAL ELEMENTS DISCOVERED SINCE 1850 26 Nomenclature and Classification of Elements. Numerical relationships. Modes of discovery. The Spectroscope. Cæsium, rubidium, thal...

STEREO-ISOMERISM: STEREO-CHEMISTRY 138 Opticity: Biot, Mitscherlich, Pasteur, Wislicenus, Van ’t Hoff, Le Bel. Asymmetry. Racemisation. Multirotation. Geometrical isomerism. Geo...