Theoretical Chemistry, from the Standpoint of Avogadro's Rule, and Thermodynamics

Abstract

NO one can compare the knowledge we possess to-day of the conditions and general laws of chemical change with the state of our knowledge ten years ago, without being much impressed by the enormous advances made in the last decade. Accurate and generalised knowledge of physical chemistry did not exist ten or twelve years ago. What is practically a new science has arisen, based on the work of such men as Guldberg and Waage, van't Hoff, Ostwald, Arrhenius, Nernst, Raoult, Gibbs, and Thomsen, who built upon the foundations laid by Dalton, Avogadro, Berthollet, Faraday, Helmholtz, Thomson, and Clausius. The special mark of the new science is that it has been produced, to use the words of Nernst, “by the co-operation of two sciences which hitherto have been, on the whole, quite independent of each other.” One hardly knows whether to speak of physical che?nistry or chemical physics.

Theoretical Chemistry, from the Standpoint of Avogadro's Rule, and Thermodynamics.

By Prof. Walter Nernst of the University of Göttingen. Translated by Prof. Charles Skeele Palmer, Ph.D. of the University of Colorado. Pp. xxv.–697. (London: Macmillan and Co. 1895.)