734 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 2 8 



The conjunction in him of two special faculties explains the char- 

 acter of much of his work — his aptitude for scientific speculation, 

 and an extraordinary facility in dealing with figures. He loved 

 statistics and it is recorded of him that as a very small boy he de- 

 lighted to sit beside his father and help him in casting his laborious 

 accounts. Arrhenius might begin a new line of work by the con- 

 sideration of tables of numerical data collected by himself or others. 

 He would frame a formula to fit them — an exercise at which he was 

 uncannily expert — and then evolve a physical hypothesis to account 

 for the formula. Or he might start with a bold speculation as to 

 how two entities were related, formulate this relation, and check the 

 formula by means of data of observation or experiment. There was 

 constant interplay between the speculative and the quantitative 

 sides of his mind. I recollect that one day in the laboratory at 

 Leipzig, after a long spell of very arduous experimental work, he 

 downed tools, saying, " I have worked enough ; now I must think," 

 and did not reappear in the laboratory for a fortnight. Extreme 

 experimental accuracy he never aimed at, considering it rather a 

 disadvantage in the search for a general law, and he used to boast 

 that he had never performed an exact experiment in his life. But 

 this statement must be taken with a grain of salt. I know that his 

 work at Leipzig was certainly more accurate than that of most of 

 his fellow workers in the laboratory, although carried out with the 

 simplest possible apparatus. 



Arrhenius had nothing academic about him save learning. In 

 person he was stoutly built, blond, blue-eyed, and rubicund, a true 

 son of the Swedish countryside. His nature was frank, generous, 

 and expansive. He was full of robust vitality and primitive force. 

 He had hearty likes and dislikes, and beneath his inborn geniality 

 and good humor was a latent combativeness, easily aroused in the 

 cause of truth and freedom. 



He was not politically active, but he was fond of discussing the 

 large questions of world politics. He spoke very bitterly of Norway 

 when she broke the union with Sweden, but later admitted that the 

 separation had been best for both countries, and expressed to me the 

 hope that Britain would give Ireland similar complete freedom. 

 The AVorld War he regarded as essentially a struggle between Ger- 

 many and Britain, and although his greatest scientific friends 

 belonged to the Central Powers, his sympathy was definitely with 

 the Allies. 



A word may be said about Arrhenius as a linguist. He held that 

 to speak a foreign language what one wanted was, not so much 

 knowledge as courage. Being liberally endowed with this latter 

 quality he spoke and wrote many languages with ease and confi- 

 dence, if not with accuracy. Indeed he considered it a waste of time 



