DR. F. P. VENABLE'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO CHEMISTRY* JAMES M. BELL, UNIVERSITY oP NORTXC A R O L ~ CHAPBL A, HILL,N. C. I t is indeed rare when the faculty roll of a university includes the name of a professor who has been with the institution continuously for half a century. I t is rarer still when during fifty years of continuous service to the cause of education, the professor has added to the sum of human knowledge in so many ways and in such eminent fashion. These contributions become more noteworthy when the professor has had to devote so many of his productive years to the guidance and general administration of the university. Such is the unusual record of Dr. Francis P. Venable.' At the end of this academic year, he will have completed fifty years of active service at the University of North Carolina, during fourteen of which he was its distinguished president, laying the-solid and stable foundations upon which its present reputation and standards have been built. It seems appropriate at this time that we should bear witness to the high qualities and review the achievements of the man. Dr. Venable was born in 1856, and saw as a young child the armies of the Union and of the Confederacy passing through Halifax Court House, Virginia. After the war his father became professor of mathematics at the University of V i n i a , and author of several famous textbooks in that subject. But Dr. Venable, or Frank as he was then known to his family and friends at Charlottesville, did not share his father's taste for mathematics, but preferred the natural sciences and the classics. For some time he was unable to make a choice'between the two. Dr. J. W. Mallett, under whom he studied at the Universits soon recognized the capabilities of the young student, and admitted him into his private laboratory, where he worked not only under Dr. Mallett's direction but under that of Professor F. P. Dunnington, who for forty-six years (1873-1919) was professor of analytical chemistry. I t is interesting to note that during the time of Dr. Venable's studies at Virginia, Dr. Mallett was engaged in the determination of the atomic weight of aluminum, the results of which were accepted for many years as the best values for this constant. Only recently has the atomic weight been modified in the light of modem methods. Dr. Mallett put his students through a hard apprenticeship. One of Dr. Venable's first jobs was to distil water, allowing the drops to come from the receiver only at a determined rate. A couple of drops more or less each minute would not be tolerated. For days the young student held a watch in his hand and counted drops, increasing and decreasing the applied heat so that the drops fell according to schedule. Later a complete analysis of the mineral, livingstoneite, was required. The successful completion of
* Paper delivered before the Division of History of Chemistry of the A. C. S. at Atlanta, Georgia, April 8, 1930. See "American Contemporaries. Francis Preston Venable," I d Eng. Chcm., 16,755 (July, 1924); cf. TTH JOURNAL, 3, 949-50 (Aug., 1926). 1300
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several of these painstaking tasks established the confidence of the professor in the student's patience and ability. For a short period Dr. Venable taught in the high school in New Orleans, and then went to Germany to complete his work in chemistry at Bonn, Berlin, and Gottingen. There he met Dr. James Lewis Howe, now professor of chemistry at Washington and Lee University. The friendship which began in those days has continued, and it is always a pleasure to Dr. Venable to recount tales of student life at Gottingen in the society of "Lew Howe." In Germany he studied under the masters: Kekulb, Hiibner, Clausius, Wallach, and Claisen. In 1880 he was called to the chair of chemistry in the University of North Carolina. The University had been closed during the Reconstruction Years, 1868 to 1875, and was able to reopen in 1875 largely as the result of the efforts of the late Dr. K. P. Battle, who presided from that time until 1891. At once Dr. Venable hegan research in chemistry, some of the early papers appearing in the f i s t volumes of the Journal of the American Chemical Society. In 1883, a group of young professors at this University organized the Elisha Mitchell Scientific Society, and began the publication of the Jourml of this Society. The Society is still in flourishing condition and possesses a fine scientific library. P. VENABLE AT THE T m FRANCIS Its Journal has acquired an interOF ACCEPTINGTEE CALLAS PRORESnational reputation. Each of the four SOX OP CHEMISTRY I N M E UNIVERCAROLINA or five young faculty members had SITY O F NORTH his own scientific hero, from whose i r Hnmphry Davy name a nickname was derived. The admirer of S was called "Hump," the admirer of Count Rumford was called "Rump," the admirer of Michael Faraday was called "Mike." Dr. Venable was the Society's first president and for many years was its permanent secretary. Dr. Venable has always insisted on the interrelationship of teaching and research. So that from the very beginning of his teaching, he has had a group of young students, undergraduates along with graduates, with whom he has been engaged at some research problem. At first the problems assigned to the students were relatively simple. It was during this early period that he devised a new form of Bunsen burner, the same in
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principle as in general use today. A picture of this burner appears in Volume 4 (1887) of the Journal of the Elishu Mitchell Scienti& Society. He says in the article: "The main feature is that the supply of gas is regulated a t the base of the burner by a milled wheel and that this supply is diminished only a t tiie issuing jet inside the chimney." It is interesting to add that he did not then recognize the great money value of this modification of the burner, since for six burners he sold the right of their manufacture and sale. Another important incident of this early period is his connection with certain experiments which were being conducted a t Spray, N. C. It was here t h a t t h e commercial
method for making calcium carbide in an electric furnace was devised. Dr. Venahle identified the material produced and recognized its great value. A dishonest associate, who later fled the country, robbed him of all financial rewards for the valuable work which he had done. Dr. Venable is perhaps best known for his work on the element zirconium and its compounds. The earliest published work on this subject appears in the Journal of the Elishu Mitchell Scientific Society for 1891, and was done with J. M. Morehead, who has just recently become United States Minister to Sweden. In 1898 the atomic weight of zirconium was determined as 90.8, just two years before Dr. Venable was called to the presidency of the University of North Carolina. The onerous duties of this office permitted little time for laboratory investigations, and continually during this time he expressed regret a t his inability to return to this problem, for he was convinced that the accepted value of the atomic weight of
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zirconium was much too low. Practically all the experimental errors of the earlier method tended to make the value too low. After his resignation as president in 1914, he immediately returned to this study of zirconium. Dr. Venable and I then began a new determination of this atomic weight, using the methods which had been developed by T. W. Richards. The new values were over one unit higher than the former results, but duplicate determinations showed variations larger than we could explain on the basis of possible experimental errors. These variations were later satis- , factorily explained by the discovery by Hevesy that all zirconium material contained a small quantity of a new element, hafnium. Some of our material was examined by Hevesy who found as much as 1% of hafnium in some of the sam~les. The atomic weight is now accepted by all as 91.2. This last rectification of the atomic weight confirms Dr. Venable's contention that the early results were uniformly too low. He has in recent years crowned this work with a very excellent monograph on ~irconium,~ one of the series of monographs published by the American Chemical Society. I n reviewing the list of the numerous publications of Dr. Venable, I find many titles pertaining t o the atomic weights of the elements, to the standards for the atomic weights, to the arrangements of the elements, and to the pedagogic uses of the periodic arrangement of the elements. An early i d E ~ Zchcm . DR. VENABLE,IN 1925, THE YEAR paper3 contains arguments in favor of THC VENABLE the adoption of oxygen = 16 as the HALLOF CHEMISTRY standard of atomic weights, suhstantially the same arguments appearing in a later paper by Brauner. This interest in the orderliness of nature was of such import and interest to Dr. Venable that he published his well-known work on the "Periodic Law"4s5 (1896), formerly used as a textbook in many colleges and universities. This hook has had a very great influence, pointing out clearly and concisely the reasons for believing that the diffeient kinds of atoms are related in an intimate way. 2 "Zirconium," Chemical Catalog Company, New York City, 1922, 173 pp. 3
4
J. Elisha Mitchell Scientific Society, 5, 98 (1888). "The Development of the Periodic Law." Chemical Publishing Co., Easton, Pa..
1896, 321 pp. 6
"The Study of the Atom." Chemical Publishing Co., Easton, Pa., 1904,290 pp.
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This interest in the orderly relationships of the elements could not but accompany an interest in the development of chemical theory in general. In fact the book on the "Periodic Law" was preceded by another volume called "A Short History of Chemi~try."~Who of the older generation is not familiar with this book? It was for years the only text in English on the history of chemistry, and it has even yet not been entirely superseded by more recent works on the subject. With the passage of time the prevailing views regarding atoms have undergone change, and we find Dr. Venable eagerly following these new developments. In 1917 he prepared a small book entitled "A Brief Account of Radioactivity,"' intended to supplement the texts on general chemistry, many of which at that time scarcely mentioned radium and the influence which the study of radioactive bodies has had on general theory. Besides these books, he is the author of "Qualitative Analysi~"~ of which there were several editions, and of a book on "Inorganic Chemistryu9 (with Dr. J. I,. Howe) based on the periodic arrangement of the elements. I t has been an unusual privilege to have been associated with Dr. Venable these twenty years. Like all the great in the scientific world, he has insisted on the establishment of facts beyond doubt before permitting any but limited speculation or theorizing, he has been a liberal conservative in chemical theory, adhering to the accepted theories until better theories were proposed, but willing to adopt well-considered ideas with solid experimental bases. Any outline of Dr. Venable's career woulp be incomplete if mention were not made of several of the honors which have come to him. He was President of the American Chemical Society twenty-five years ago, president of several educational associations in the South, recipient of honorary degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Alabama, the University of South Carolina, and Lafayette College. The University of North Carolina has done itself the honor of naming its new chemical laboratory "Venable Hall,"'O and will do itself the honor of conferring an honorary degree on Dr. Venable when he retires from active service in June, 1930. These honors recognize his eminent qualities in authorship, research, and administration. 6 "A Short Histonr of Chernistnr," D. C. Heath and Co.. 50 Beacon Street, Boston. Mass.. 1894 (3 editions), 163 pp. 7 "A Brief Account of Radioactivity." D. C. Heath and Co., 50 Beacon Street, Boston, Mass.. 1917, 54 pp. 8 "A Course in Qualitative Chemical Analysis," New York University Publishing Co., New York, N . Y . , 1883 (4 editions), 53 pp. 9 "Inorganic Chemistry According to the Periodic Law," with J. L. Howe of Washington and Lee University, Chemical Publishing Co., Easton, Pa., 1898. ' 0 For an abstract of the dedicatory address delivered by the late Edgar Fahs 3, 9 4 6 9 (Aug.. 1926). Smith, see THISJOURNAL,
