Chemistry

Abstract

WITHOUT waiting for a jubilee, which is not due for another eight years, the editor of the Alembic Club Reprints has provided an English translation of the papers by van't Hoff on osmotic pressure and by Arrhenius on electrolytic dissociation, which appeared in the first volume of the Zeitschrift für physikalische Chemie in 1887. These will be of real value to teachers and students alike, since they will make it easy, especially for those who dislike the effort of reading German, to obtain a first-hand knowledge of the early work of the group of actors who for so many years occupied the centre of the stage on which the newly labelled cult of physical chemistry was displayed. Modern workers have thrown grave doubts on the validity of the deductions which were then made with so much confidence, and have used as evidence of discrepancy the same data which were formerly cited as evidence of concordance between theory and experiment; but for this very reason it is all the more important that the original texts should be accessible. The reprint would have been of even greater value if it had included the critical but constructive work of Debye and Hückel, but it seems likely that the rules of the Alembic Club prohibit the payment of such a compliment to contemporary workers.

The Foundations of the Theory of Dilute Solutions.

Papers on Osmotic Pressure, by J. H. Van't Hoff.; and on Electrolytic Dissociation, by Svante Arrhenius. (Alembic Club Reprints, No. 19.) Pp. 67. (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd; London: Gurney and Jackson, 1929.) 2s. 6d.