Essays in Historical Chemistry

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Macmillan and Company, limited, 1902 - 582 pages

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Page 365 - So live, that when thy summons comes to join The innumerable caravan, which moves To that mysterious realm, where each shall take His chamber in the silent halls of death, Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night, Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave, Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
Page 189 - My desire to escape from trade, which I thought vicious and selfish, and to enter into the service of Science, which I imagined made its pursuers amiable and liberal, induced me at last to take the bold and simple step of writing to Sir H. Davy...
Page 493 - Without entering into details, I will give the conclusions I then arrived at in the very words I used: 1. The elements, if arranged according to their atomic weights, exhibit an evident periodicity of properties. 2. Elements which are similar as regards their chemical properties have atomic weights which are either of nearly the same value ( eg platinum, iridium, osmium ) or which increase regularly ( eg potassium, rubidium, caesium).
Page 292 - To form some conception of the degree of coarse-grainedness indicated by this conclusion, imagine a rain drop, or a globe of glass as large as a pea, to be magnified up to the size of the earth, each constituent molecule being magnified in the same proportion. The magnified structure would be coarser grained than a heap of small shot, but probably less coarse grained than a heap of cricketballs.
Page 58 - The feeling of it to my lungs was not sensibly different from that of common air, but I fancied that my breast felt peculiarly light and easy for some time afterwards. Who can tell but that in time this pure air may become a fashionable .article 1 Lee. cit. p. 94. in luxury ? Hitherto only two mice and myself have had the privilege of breathing it.
Page 498 - ... unique matter, and it has no historical connection with that relic of the torments of classical thought, and therefore it affords no more indication of the unity of matter or of the compound character of our elements, than the law of Avogadro, or the law of specific heats, or even the conclusions of spectrum analysis.
Page 108 - By this means upwards of 135 grains of water were condensed in the cylinder, which had no taste nor smell, and which left no sensible sediment when evaporated to dryness ; neither did it yield any pungent smell during the evaporation ; in short, it seemed pure water.
Page 153 - In this situation, I saw reason to embrace what is generally called the heterodox side of almost every question.
Page 495 - When, in 1871, I described to the Russian Chemical Society the properties, clearly defined by the periodic law, which such elements ought to possess, I never hoped that I should live to mention their discovery to the Chemical Society of Great Britain as a confirmation of the exactitude and the generality of the periodic law.
Page 124 - le plus riche de tous les savans; et probablement aussi, le plus savant de tous les riches." Or consider what Norbert Wiener has said of himself, "I was competitive beyond the run of younger mathematicians, and I knew equally that this was not a very pretty attitude. However, it was not an attitude which I was free to assume or to reject.

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