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JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL EDUCATION
present publication. It is quite probable that most of the articles here offered would he found much too serious by the average American reader. A translation of the hook would probably be no more of a success in our country than "Creative Chemistry" would be in France. The entire field of applied chemistry is covered. The 61 titles appear t o include every conceivable application of chemistry. Each article is written by a specialist and is characterized more by accuracy of f a d and expression than by stimulation of the reader's interest. The book should be appreciated in America particularly by teachers and those desiring detailed information upon recent accomplishments in particular fields of chemistry. It should also prove helpful t o students desiring to improve their knowledge of the French language while acquiring information upon chemistry. Those competing in the Prize Essay Contests would undoubtedly find it helpful and it might, therefore. well be added to the collection of reference books in those schools and colleges where the students are encouraged to take part in this contest. The preface by M. Jean Gerard is especially forcefully conceived. The outstanding place occupied hy chemistry in all human affairs is expressed in a most striking manner. Thus he states:
These are examples of the great truths which it is the purpose of the present hook to expose. A ~ E R S~ e r oNe u L'Iz"STrmT P*Bf-6". 28 R u s Dmor
Paazs, P a * ~ c e
Crucibles. The Lives and Achievements of the Great Chemists. Bmlrano J ~ E Simon . and Schuster, New 377 pp. York City, 1930. viii
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23.5 X $5.00.
O ~ ~ O B E1930 R.
15.5 cm. 24 illustrations.
This manuscript was chosen for the "Francis Bacon Award for the Humanizing of Knowledge" as the most meritorious piece of writing aiming to humanize a given branch of knowledge. It is an attractive book in press work and format. Its story of chemistry is centered about the following seventeen personalities ranging in period from the year 1400 t o the present time: Trevisan, Paracelsus, Becher, Priestley, Caveudish. Lavoisier, Dalton, Berzelins, Avogadro. W6hler, Mendel&&, Arrhenius, Mme. Curie, J. J. Thompson, Maseley, and Langmnir. The author has used the modern journalistic method of beginning each chapter with an epigram or an attractive incident and then developing the story backward or forward as the situation demands. The style aims a t the dramatic and is on so high a tension that it is fatiguing a t times. His scientists are always "dreamers" and the thread of the narrative is occasionally lost in too great a wealth of interesting hut a t times samewhat extraneous material. To the student of chemistry a more accurate title would be "the lives of certain great chemists," since the selection of men, especially those born in the last century, is peculiarly limited. In the choice of subjects, the author would seem intentionally or otherwise to have had two purposes in view; uiz., first, to depict some of the "follies of science" and, secondly, t o trace the development of certain chemical laws and theories. with special reference to the structure of the atom. Thus Bernard Trevisan gives to the "art of the gold maker" a local habitation and a name. The search for the philosopher's stone was always an alluring one, but it should he recalled that it was only one phase in the accumulation of a great store of chemical fact and chemical technology during the early centuries. Browning's "Paracelsus" is a wonderful
VOL.7. No. 10
RECENT BOOKS
poem, though it can hsrdly be regarded as a correct interpretation of the real Paradsus, whose biographers have ofttimes found i t diacult t o distinguish between fact and fancy. Had industrial chemistry been considered in the volume, the life of either Beringucdo, Agricola, or Palissy would have given a very interesting story of the technical advancementsof the seventeenth century. With the many-sided Becher appears the dodrine of phlogiston, the first real chemical theory, that held sway for nearly two hundred years. The chemical revolution and the new atomic theory are well described in the chapters on Priestley. Cavendish, Lavoisier, and Dalton, while a very readable account is given of the old symbols of chemistry and of Berzelius' great reformation in chemical namendature and epoch-madeterminations of atomic weights, though the other services of this great Swede receive scant mention. With this foundation the author devotes the rest of the volume (excepting a chapter on W6hler) t o the history of the development of molar volumes, the periodic system, the nature of solutions, as shown by their ions and the ultimate conception of the structure of the atom. Little is said of the other accomplishments of physical chemistry. The narrative, which is built upon the lives of Avogadro, a professor of mathematical physics, Mendel6&, Arrhenius, Mme. Curie, J. J. Thompson, another physicist. Moseley, and Langmuir makes an interesting and relatively comprehensive account of this special phase of chemistry, and occupies almost one-half of the text. The author has carried out what seems to be his purpose in an unusual and original manner with a wealth of incident and story that shows wide reading. As a "history of chemistry" it is notable not only by what it includes but by its omissions. No chemists horn in the last one hundred years are featured save those
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that had to do with chemical theories and the nature of the atom. The chapter on W6hler (b. 1800) tells of the urea synthesis and of his friendship and relations with Liebig. It contains, also brought in ui ct armis, in a half-dozen pages some of the accomplishments of organic and biochemistry. Baeyer is mentioned in connection with indigo; Willstitter, the greatest synthetic organic chemist today, is not listed; while Emil Fischer is refexred t o as "this young Jew," which would mightily astonish his two hundred years of Protestant ancestors. Despite its too strained style, the hook is a noteworthy account of "certain great chemists and physicists and of certain phases in the history of our science." Undoubtedly the stimulus of this volume will arouse the curiosity of some readers as t o other fields for the history of chemistry. F. B. DAINS UNrVBXSIT7 OP KANSAS
LIWRBNCB.KANSAS
Stuff. The Story of Materials in the G. BEERY, Service of Man. PAULIN& Assistant Professor of Chemistry in Pennsylvania State College. D. Appleton & Co., New York City, 1930. xiii 504 pp. 124 illustrations. 14.5 X 21.5 em. $5.00.
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Chemistry is naturally a cryptic science. The alchemists made it more so. Chemistry and the world a t large have sufiered delay of progress by reason of the -togrammic language of modern chemists. The author has reversed the emphasis in favor of the beginner and the layman. The language is understandable even by the tyro in chemistry, and the forceful style even dares to use the slang phrase t o catch and hold the attention. There is no suggestion of the "ballyhoo." The viewpoint is that of the user of "stu5." and it is chemistry in term of lifc which the N. E. A. Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education requested of textbook writers as e d y as 1918. Since they have quite generally
