Alas Bodenstein, one of the foremost physical chemists of his feneration, was born a t 'Magdeburg on July 15. 1871. H e received his chemical training principally a t Heidelberg (Ph.D., 3893). Assistant t o Ostwald a t Leipsic (1900-06), extraordinary professor a t Berlin (1906-08), professor a t Hannover (1908-23). in 1923 he succeeded Nernst as director of the Physical Chemical Institute of the University of Berlin. He became dirrctor emeritus in 1936. Dr. Bodenstein was visitin professor a t Johns Hopkins in 1929, and holds an honorarp SC%. from Princeton. I n 1892, be applied t o Viktor Mqver for a doctorate topic and hoped that he would he allowed t o synthesize new, beautifully colored, well-crystallized compounds. Great was his disappointment when, instead, Meyer insisted that he make a study of the thermal decomposition of h dro en iodide. Neither of them suspected that the whole o?Boknstein3s chemical career was then determined, that practically the sole content of this forty veers of research mould stem from this doctorate research, that he would become the world authority in this field of physical chemistry. The kmetics of gas reactions, the measurements of reaction veloc&r, of eqnil~bria, reaction orders, the effect of foreign materials, homogeneous and heterogeneous catal sis, photochemical and reactions in the dark, have occupied l i m and the numerous co-worlcers who came to the laboratory t o learn the modern methods of investigating these systems. The mere accumulation of accurate data o n a wide variety of r.%scs n o s iollo\rrd I,,v int:mntr exnmination o i there r e . ~ t i o n r . and the fSlctorsw l d ;wrrn ~ tlmcmr roursc trere d~sentangle
