SVANTE ARRHENIUS 



By Sir James Walker 



[With one plate] 



A little over 40 years ago the conjunction of the ideas of osmotic 

 pressure and of electrolytic dissociation ushered in a new era in the 

 development of the physical chemistry of solutions — an era of unex- 

 ampled fertility. Van 't Hoff and Arrhenius, the originators of 

 these new ideas, have now both passed away. It is 16 years since I 

 was charged by the society to deliver the van 't Hoff memorial lec- 

 ture. To-day it is my task to discharge a similar duty in honor of 

 Arrhenius. My relations to these men were altogether different; 

 Arrhenius was a close friend, van 't Hoff a remote immortal. The 

 sketch of the life and work of Arrhenius which I present is there- 

 fore not that of a completely detached historian, but is shaped by 

 personal reminiscence and tinged with personal affection. - 



1 well remember when I first encountered his name. It was in 

 the autumn of 1887 in the small departmental library of Baeyer's 

 laboratory in Munich. On a shelf there lay the loose numbers of the 

 first volume of the Zeitschrift fiir Physikalische Chemie, newly 

 founded by Ostwald. Turning over the pages of this interesting 

 new journal, I saw what seemed to me the very odd name of Svante 

 Arrhenius as author of a paper on the influence of neutral salts on 

 the velocity of saponification of ethyl acetate. I did not find this 

 paper of more than moderate interest, but later in the year there 

 was published another by the same author on the dissociation of 

 substances dissolved in water. This was plainly a novel and striking 

 conception, and although I was not altogether convinced by the 

 arguments it contained I marked it for closer study at a later time. 



In the spring of the following year I left Munich for Leipzig and 

 was caught in the wave of Ostwald's enthusiasm for the new doc- 

 trines of osmotic pressure and electrolytic dissociation. In Ostwald's 

 laboratory I used to work in a small room with Wilhelm Meyerhoffer, 



' Arrhenius memorial lecture, delivered on May 10, 1928. Reprinted by permission 

 from the Journal of the Chemical Society, 1928, London. 



2 I take this opportunity of tbanliing the many friends, both Swedish and English to 

 whom I am indebted for information regarding Arrhenius. A bibliography of his worli 

 up to 1908 is to be found in Z. Physilsal. Cheni., vol. 69, and up to 1918 in Medd. K. 

 Vetenskapsakad. Nobel-institut, vol. 5. 



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