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out in their first edition that “if applied with discretion and under standard conditions, fluorescence analysis is a most valuable aid to the scientific worker, especially in routine work or sorting tests, and may usually supplement, though seldom completely replace, ordinary testing or analytical methods.” The difficulty is not only that so many things fluoresce, but that the fluorescence is so often changed by the presence of other molecular species, often in very small amounts and perhaps not even suspected as being present. However, fluorescence analysis is becoming a valuable tool in the hands of those skilled in its use and cognizant of its capricious behavior, consequently an authoritative book covering this field fulfills a useful purpose. The subject matter covered is as follows: PART I. Theory and Technique of Fluorescence Analysis. The titles of the chapters are as follows: I. Theoretical introduction; 11. The production of ultra-violet light; 111. Filters; IV. The measurement of the intensity of sources of ultra-violet light; V. Methods and technique of fluorescence analysis. PART 11. Applications of Fluorescence Analysis. The titles of the chapters are as follows: I. Agriculture; 11. Bacteriology; 111. Botany; IV. Constructional materials and glass, etc.; V. Drugs; VI. Foods and food products; VII. Fuels and lubricants; VIII. Inorganic chemistry; IX. Leather and tanning; X . Legal and criminological work; XI. Medical and biological science; XII. Minerals and gems; XIII. Museum work; XIV. Organic chemistry; XV. Paints and varnishes; XVI. Paper, cellulose and allied industries; XVII. The rubber industry; XVIII. Textiles; XIX. Waters and sewage. This is an excellent book, well written and printed, dealing with a subject of much importance and interest. I t should be in every chemical library. J. H. MATHEWS.
Collected Scientijc Papers of Sir W i l l i a m Bate Hardy, F. R. S. Published under the auspices of the Colloid Committee of the Faraday Society (preface by Eric Rideal). 17.5 x 26 cm.; xi 922 pp.; portrait; 14 plates; many figures. Cambridge, England: The University Press (New York: The MacMillan Company), 1936. Price: $18.00. I t is given to a few men t o make a major impression upon the scientific thought of their times. Sir William was one of this chosen few. His contribution was all the more remarkable because of the breadth of his influence. He made major contributions to such diverse fields as zoology, morphology, cytology, physiology, biochemistry, physical chemistry, colloid chemistry, physics, and engineering. His education a t Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, was as a zoologist; following graduation he remained in the laboratories of his college, becoming a Fellow of the College in 1892 and later Demonstrator and then Lecturer in Physiology in the University of Cambridge. During this early period in his educational career (1892-1898) he puhlished eleven papers dealing primarily with the histology, morphology, behavior, and function of the free living or “wandering cells” (i.e., the leucocytes) of crustaceans, amphibians, and mammals. I t was this series of studies which led him into the field of surface phenomena. As Rideal notes in the preface of the present volume, Sir William once saw a cell divide under the microscope and he asked himself the question, “Why does a cell divide?” This question motivated Sir William’s future work in that borderline field between biochemistry, physics, colloid chemistry, and physiology, and led him to investigate surface and interfacial phenomena. In 1899 he published two classic papers in the Journal of Physiology. One was entitled “On the Structure of Cell Protoplasm”; the other “On the Coagulation of Proteid by Electricity.” These mere his beginning papers in colloid chemistry. They reflected his earlier interest in cytology, morphology, and histology. In the
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histological methods which he had used the tissues were fixed, hardened, dehydrated, and stained for microscopical observations. Sir William questioned whether or not such drastic treatments may not have produced from the complex colloidal matrix of the living cell structures which were in reality artifacts. So his colloid chemical studies began from the necessity of testing such a hypothesis. Sir William was not fundamentally trained in chemistry, physics, and mathematics, but he acquired the necessary working knowledge of these fields after his formal education had been completed in the University. His study in 1903 df the effect of the rays from radium on protein sols is one of the earlier papers on the effect of radium rays on biocolloids or living tissues. His studies of the physics and chemistry of the “boundary state” were pioneer studies in that field and early led into problems of adhesion. These problems of adhesion in turn led to his studies on the fundamentals of lubrication and the concept of the orientation of molecules, this concept antedating the later work of Harkins and Langmuir and being arrived a t from an entirely different viewpoint. To Sir William’s studies on the equilibrium of the protein in the blood we owe the concept of the isoelectric point as a fundamental and characteristic property of the proteins and other colloid systems. In the present volume all of Sir William’s papers have been brought together and reprinted in chronological order. They comprise fifty-nine papers in number, beginning with a study of the histology and development of the hybroid, MyriotheEa phrygia, in 1891 and ending with the Abraham Flexner leoture “To Remind-A Biological Essay”, a philosophical summing up of his life interests (delivered in 1931 but not printed until 1934). Many of the early biological papers are illustrated with plates of careful drawings, beautifully colored. The only criticism of the volume that the reviewer would offer is that i t does not contain a biographical sketch. Consequently, the young reader may be left ignorant of the fact that Sir William was first and last a biologist, who used the tools of physics and chemistry to attack a fundamental biological problem. The world of science is indebted to the Colloid Committee of the Faraday Society for making all these valuable papers accessible in one volume. The reviewer knows of no more inspiring volume to place in the hands of the young student of living processes, be he labeled botanist, zoologist, physiologist, biochemist, or biophysicist. May it assist some of these to carry on the task which Sir William laid for himself; for he says “the biologist’s job is to take the findings of physics and chemistry and faithfully to apply them to the riddle of this impossible elusive living slime in its coat of many colors.” Ross AIKENGORTNER.
Adsorptionstecnnzk. By FRANZ KRZIL. 22 x 15.5 cm.; 132 pp. Dresden and Leipzip: Theodor Steinkopff, 1935. Price: 8.50 RM. For one who knows adsorption mainly from the scientific laboratory it is interesting to see the enormous technical application which has developed, especially in the last twenty years. Solitary cases of technical adsorption processes are very old: the ancients used charcoal or clay t o clarify wine; Lowitz in 1785 improved the quality of spirit by letting its vapor pass over charcoal; since 1794 charcoal-later boneblack-has been used in sugar refining. But i t was the war and the adsorbent charcoal in the gas-masks which made the many possibilities of adsorption processes generally known. Active carbon, bleaching clays, kieselguhr, and silica gel are the chief types of adsorbents. They are not only used to remove unwelcome impurities (coloring
