724 ANNUAL. REPOET SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 2 8 



This comprehensive paper, which rims to 150 printed pages, was 

 presented to the University of Upsala as a dissertation for the 

 doctorate of the university. Its somewhat strange form is no doubt 

 due to the use thus made of it. At the ends of sections and para- 

 graphs there are numbered and italicized propositions, of widely 

 different degrees of probability, and deduced by arguments of very 

 different degrees of cogency. The paper then on a cursory inspec- 

 tion might convey an unfavorable impression if only the italicized 

 portions were attended to. These propositions were probably the 

 theses which were to be defended by the candidate in public debate 

 with an opponent appointed by the university. The disputation 

 passed off successfully and it must have been a bitter disappointment 

 to Arrhenius when his dissertation was awarded a fourth class {non 

 sine laude approhatur) and his defense a third {cum laude appro- 

 hatur) . After every allowance has been made for the novel and un- 

 usual character of the dissertation, it is difficult to see how the Uni- 

 ver,sity of Upsala, the University of Bergman and Berzelius, should 

 have condemned a brilliant thesis on the very subjects of affinity and 

 electrochemistry associated with these names. For the award 

 amounted to a condemnation; in view of it Arrhenius could not 

 normally become a docent in the University of Upsala. 



Arrhenius sent copies of his paper to Clausius, Lothar Meyer, 

 Ostwald, and van 't Hoff. " These celebrated men," he says, " with 

 whom the Upsala professors were not to be compared, treated me as 

 a colleague and not as a stupid schoolboy." Ostwald was eminently 

 friendly. He himself in his work on chemical dynamics was being 

 drawn to the conclusion that velocities of reactions in which acids 

 participate are connected with the electric conductivities of the acids. 

 He writes (J. pr. Chem., 1884, 30, 93) : " To test the idea I have 

 during the past six months made j^reliminary experimeitts, which 

 however have often been interrupted by other work. Meanwhile 

 Svante Arrhenius, working in another range of ideas, undertook simi- 

 lar experiments and has published them in two memoirs, which also 

 contain a very notable theory of chemical affinity developed from 

 them. To the author of these memoirs, which belong to the most im- 

 portant ever published on the subject of affinity, there must be ac- 

 corded not only priority of publication but priority of the idea." 



Oliver Lodge was impressed by the paper and wrote for the Reports 

 of the British Association in 1886 an abstract and critical analysis 

 of it extending to 30 closely printed pages. " The paper seem,s to me 

 a distinct step toward a mathematical theory of chemistry. The 

 title affixed to it is ' The Chemical Theory of Electrolytes,' but it is 

 a bigger thing than this : It really is an attempt at an electrolytic 

 theory of chemistry." 



