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How the concept of chemical affinity evolved and how it contributed to chemical science

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Abstract

This historiographic paper traces the evolution of the concept of chemical affinity from its antique origins until the end of the twentieth century. It shows how this concept changed over time, which important problems in the chemical science it revealed, and how it contributed to the development of chemical thermodynamics and kinetics, solution theory, electrochemistry, and nonequilibrium thermodynamics.

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All data presented in this lecture were obtained from the openly available published material. There is no internal data.

Notes

  1. Due to a huge number of references most of them were moved to the Supplementary Material.

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Acknowledgements

The author is very grateful to Prof. Dr. Fritz Scholz, the Editor-in-Chief of ChemTexts, for reviewing this manuscript before submission, for providing the image of Fig. 2, and for invaluable advice and discussion. The author also highly appreciates the efforts of the staff of the projects Gallica Digital Library by the National Library of France (https://gallica.bnf.fr), Biodiversity Heritage Library by Smithsonian Libraries and Archives (https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org), The Internet Archive (https://archive.org), HathiTrust Digital Library (https://www.hathitrust.org), The Munich DigitiZation Center by the Bavarian State Library (https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de), Bavarikon by the Free State of Bavaria (https://www.bavarikon.de), Library of Congress (https://www.loc.gov), The Online Books by University of Pennsylvania (https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu), Google Books (https://books.google.com), journals@UrMEL by Thuringian University and State Library (https://zs.thulb.uni-jena.de), Deutsches Textarchiv by German Science Foundation (https://www.deutschestextarchiv.de), edoc by Humboldt University of Berlin (https://edoc.hu-berlin.de), German Digital Library (https://www.deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de), Bibliothèque patrimoniale numérique by Paris School of Mines (https://patrimoine.mines-paristech.fr), AMS Historica by University of Bologna (https://amshistorica.unibo.it), Arba Minch University Digital Library (https://ds.amu.edu.et), Digital Library of the University and State Library of Saxony-Anhalt (https://digital.bibliothek.uni-halle.de), Project Gutenberg (https://www.projekt-gutenberg.org), and Zeno (http://www.zeno.org) for the digitalizing of historic books and journals and providing the free access to them. Without their efforts this publication would not be possible.

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  1. Krivolapova 19, 640026, Kurgan, Russia

    Pavel Anatolyevich Nikolaychuk

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  1. Pavel Anatolyevich Nikolaychuk
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P.A.N. made a literature survey and analysis and prepared this lecture.

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Correspondence to Pavel Anatolyevich Nikolaychuk.

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Nikolaychuk, P.A. How the concept of chemical affinity evolved and how it contributed to chemical science. ChemTexts 10, 2 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40828-023-00185-6

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