DR. IGNACY MOSCICKI President of the Polish Republic (1926"The Polish Nation
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in the free and unhampered development of scientific thought, the surest guarantee of the progress and spread of universal civilization and culture." Warzawa-The Castle February 24, 1937 sees
For biographical note contributed h Dr. Ralph E. Oesper, of the University of Cincinnati, see page 359. Dr. desper also lent the photograph here reproduced.
IGNACY MOSCICKI* IGNACY MOSCICKI, chemist and statesman, was born a t Mierzanow,Poland, in 1867. Afterhis graduation from the Polytechnic at Riga in 1891, the young engineer spent several years in England where be gained valuable industrial experience. In 1897 he was appointed assistant to Kowalski, the physicist, a t the University of Freiburg (Switzerland). Here began his real scientific career. The dire predictions of Crookes in 1898 had brought the fixation of nitrogen to the serious attention of the chemical world, and the use of the electric arc to bring about the union of nitrogen and oxygen was being studied by chemists and physicists, particularly in countries blessed with considerable water power. In 1903, a semi-industrial plant was constructed by Moscicki a t Freiburg, but the publication of the results of Birkeland and Eyde led him to abandon his original ideas and to attack the difficultproblem from another direction. His new design centered around an arc that was kept constantly rotating by the action of a magnetic field. The unit was put into operation in 1905 and attracted wide-spread interest. Einstein, then attached to the German Patent Office, made a special trip to Switzerland to see the Moscicki furnace, as did Crookes. Later, this design was used on an industrial scale a t Chippis, and this plant was the sole producer of nitrates in Switzerland during the war. The large scale use of the arc brought with it the problems of high tensions, which were being used industrially for the first time. Moscicki devised condensers capable of withstanding voltages as high as 100,000 and he introduced them for the protection of electric networks against atmospheric influences. The important problems of absorbing the nitrous gases and of concentrating the dilute solutions were successfully met, and in 1910 the first shipment of
See frontispiece.
concentrated nitric acid produced electrothermically came from this Swiss plant. Moscicki, about this time, worked out another important synthesis, namely the preparation of hydrocyanic acid from nitrogen and hydrocarbons. Several years later this process was put into practice in Poland. In 1912 he was recalled to his native land, as professor of physical and electrochemistryat Lw6w. From then on he turned most of his attention to the problems of Polish chemical industries, particularly petroleum. Noteworthy was his work on the breaking of emulsions, fractional distillation, extraction of gasoline from natural gas, chlorination of methane, etc. In order to advance interest in this type of research. he organized "Methane," a society devoted to the scientific and industrial aspects of the oil and gas industries. The organization was later transformed into the "Institute of Chemical Research," whose province includes all fields of chemistry. After the war Moscicki's activities revolved around the development of the chemical industries of his Fatherland. The nitrogen industry of Poland is practically his creation, and the new plant a t Moscice, built almost entirely from his plans, is a model of its kind. Deservedly popular for what he had contributed to the welfare of his country, this eminent man of science and technology, to whom the Polish chemical industry owes so much, was made President of the Polish Republic in 1926. Not the least among his other notable qualifications was the f a d that he had not previously engaged in political activities. He senred with such distinction that he was elected for a second seven-year term in 1933. No chemist has ever occupied such a high political position, and his career is a shining example of the truth of the idea that a scientific training is the best preparation for governmental responsibilities. (Contributed by Ralph E. Oesper, University of Cincinnati.)
