1899.] on Liquid Hydrogen. 5 



follows : " Professor Olszewski had succeeded in liquefying hydrogen, and 

 from unpublished information received from Cracoio, he (Ramsay) was 

 able to state that a fair amount of liquid had been obtained, not as a froth, 

 but in a state of quiet ebullition, by surrounding a tube containing com- 

 pressed hydrogen by another tube also containing compressed hydrogen at 

 the temperature of oxygen boiling at a very low pressure. On allowing 

 the hydrogen in the middle jacket suddenly to expand, the hydrogen in the 

 innermost tube liquefied, and was seen to have a meniscus. Its critical 

 point and its boiling point, under atmospheric pressure, were determined 

 by means of a resistance thermometer." * 



This announcement of Professor Eamsay' s had from its very 

 specific and detailed experimental character the merit of the appear- 

 ance of being genuine, although it was never substantiated, either 

 by the production of the Cracow document, or by any subsequent 

 publication of such important results by Professor Olszewski himself. 

 My observation at the time on Professor Eamsay's communication 

 was that quotations had been made in my paper from the most 

 recent publications of Professor Olszewski in which he made no 

 mention of getting " Static Hydrogen or of seeing a meniscus " or of 

 getting as Professor Ramsay alleged " a fair amount of liquid, not as a 

 froth, but in a state of quiet ebullition." To achieve such a result would 

 require a very different scale of experiment from anything Professor 

 Olszewski had so far described. Naturally an early corroboration of 

 the startling statement made by Professor Eamsay as to this alleged 

 anticipation was expected, but strange to say Professor Olszewski 

 published no confirmation of the experiments detailed by Professor 

 Eamsay in scientific journals of date immediately preceding my paper 

 or during the following years 1896, 1897 or up to May 1898. The 

 moment the announcement was made by me to the Eoyal Society 

 in May 1898 that, after years of labour, hydrogen had at last been 

 obtained as a static liquid, Professor Eamsay repeated the story to 

 the Eoyal Society that Olszewski had anticipated my results (basing 

 the assertion solely on the contents of the old letter received some 

 two and a half years before), in spite of the fact that during the 

 interval he, Professor Eamsay, must have known that Professor 

 Olszewski had never corroborated in any publication either the form 

 of the experiments he had so minutely described or the results which 

 were said to follow. Challenged by me at the Eoyal Society Meeting 

 on May 12, 1898, to produce Olszewski's letter of 1895, he did not 

 do so, but at the next meeting of the Society, Professor Eamsay read 

 a letter he had received during the interval from Professor Olszewski, 

 denying that he had ever stated that he had succeeded in producing 

 static liquid hydrogen. This oral communication of the contents of 

 the new Olszewski letter (of which it is to be regretted there is no 

 record in the published proceedings of the Eoyal Society) is the only 

 kind of retraction Professor Eamsay has thought fit to make of his 



* ' Proceedings ' of the Chemical Society, No. 195, 1897-1898. 



