VOL.9. NO. 5
RECENT BOOKS
generation of private friends and relations, in his own terms. Faraday. however, is such a man. His life and its actions provide no ground for interpretation in terms other than those he employed. His exceedingly simple and unquestioning belief in the tenets of his religion appears strange in a man whose life was passed in the exercise of intellectual discrimination. Yet his religious beliefs were never held as a conscious means of simplifying his mental powers: they were a sublimation of that part of his nature which could otherwise have harmed the exercise of those powers. "There is no key to Faraday's life, no isolated grouping of thought and action in the form of a conflict t o drive him to work for relief from that conflict. Everything in his l i f e h i s birth, his religion, his marriage appear as expressions of a s e a t and simple nature. The reason Faraday as an old man retained the fresh enthusiasm, the simplicity and kindness of his youth was because, in the midst of every kind of intellectual and social triumph. his nature did not change nor acquire qualities or defects alien t o it. And in the crowning expression of his life, the discovery of the fundamental laws of electromagnetism, the experimental philasopher is inseparable from the visionary. He had no need t o turn his mind into a passionless instrument: -, he oerceived the human elements of imagination and intuition in the laws and phenomena he investigated." The book is handsomely printed with paper, easily legible type on tit is a pity that the author is notgiven plainer credit for a piece of work. His name (or hers) does not appear an the title page. On the last page of the hook, along with the names of the printing company and the typographer, the name of the author is given. TENNEY D A V ~ S
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Massaurus~mI ~ s r r r v r sos TzcnpoLoau C A Y B ~ ~MASSAC-BTTS E .
Die Chemie in Jena von R o l 5 c k bis Knorr (1629-1921). (Chemistry a t Jena, from Rolfinck to Knorr, 16291921.) DR. F m ~ zCAEMNITIUS.Ver-
969
lag der Frommannschen Buchhandlung Walter Biedermann, Jena, 1929. 192 pp. Illustrated. 14 X 22 cm. Price, unbound, about R.M. 7. This is a history of the teaching of chemistry a t Jena, and consists of two principal chapters containing biographies of the professors and coveridg respectively the periods when chemistry was important because of its services t o pharmacy and when chemistry was an independent study. These are followed by a history of the Chemical Institute of the University, and by tables indicating the dates of the professors and the courses which they gave. It is t o be wished that there were similar books relative to other universities. The hook contains portraits of Werner Rolfinck (1599-1673). Georg Wolfgang Wedel (1645-1721). Johann Adrian Slevogt (1653-1726). Johann Adolph Wedel (1675-1747). Hermann Friedrich Reichmeyer (1685-1744). Ernst Anton Nicolai (1722-1802), Johann Wolfgang D6bereiner (1780-1849). Heinrich Wilhelm Ferdinand Wackenroder (1798-1854). Eduard Reichardt (1827-1891). Johann Georg Anton Geuther (1833-1889), and Ludwig Knorr (1859-1921). TENNEY L. DAVIS M*SO&CRUSBTTJ INSTITUTE OF TBCANOLOUY CANBBIDGB. MA~~ACBITLBTTS
MISCELLANEOUS PWLICATIONS Chemistry at the Centenary (1931) Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Published for The Association of British Chemical Manufadurers by W. Heffer Sons, Ltd.. Cambridge, England. 1932. xi 272 PP. 13 5 X 21.5 cm. 7s. 6d.2 net. This volume is the only complete record of the Proceedings of the Chemistry Seetion of the British Association a t its Centenary ~~~~i~~ last septembw, ~t in. dudes: (1) Sir Harold Hartley's Presidential Address on "Michael Faraday and the Theory of Electrolytic Conduction." (2) The discussion on the Influence of
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