Chemiluminescence 427 



Tschirnhaus (1651-1708) in Paris. An account was published in 

 the Histoire of the Royal Academy and appeared in the fifth edition 

 of Lemery's Cours de Chymie in 1683. Since that time, William 

 Homberg, who had seen the material prepared by Boyle, described 

 its properties in Paris. His experiments appeared in the April and 

 May issues of the Memoires of the Royal Academy of Sciences, 1692. 

 He later described a " burning Phosphorus, which may be drawn 

 from Human Excrement " and gave the receipt to the Academy in 

 1710. This material prepared from dried faeces and alum was a 

 pyrophore which would spontaneously ignite when exposed to the 

 air, rather than a phosphorus. Thus, despite the attempts at secrecy 

 and the various underhanded dealings and accusations between the 

 principles involved, the mode of preparation of phosphorus became 

 a well known fact.^ 



It is not surprising that so remarkable a substance as phosphorus 

 should be suggested as material for a doctor's dissertation. The first 

 of these, a thesis of fifty-four pages, was presented in 1688 to the 

 medical faculty of the University of Frankfurt on the Oder, Ber- 

 nardo Albino presiding. The author was John Christolph Kletwich 

 and the title Dissertatio de Phosphoro Liquido et Solido, Kletwich 

 related the known properties of the material, included twenty obser- 

 vations of his own, which added nothing new, and referred to the 

 work of Balduinus, Kirchmajerus, Elscholtzius, Lentilius, Boyleus, 

 Menzelius, and Dr. Slare. In 1710 Leibnitz published his history of 

 the knowledge of phosphorus in the Miscellanea Berolinensia (1710, 

 part II, pp. 91-98) . 



ROBERT BOYLE AND COLLEAGUES 



The earliest workers noted that phosphorus was luminous as a 

 solid or in gaseous form or when dissolved in oils, as a liquid. These 

 materials came to be known as the icy, the aerial, and the liquid 

 noctiluca, largely through the work of Robert Boyle. Of all those 

 who prepared phosphorus in the seventeenth century, the studies of 

 Boyle were most complete. His two books appeared a few months 

 apart and were entitled The Aerial Noctiluca (London, 1680) and 

 The Icy Noctiluca (London, 1681) of 109 and 150 pages, respec- 

 tively. Figure 37 reproduces the title page of The Aerial Noctiluca. 

 The two (bound together) were translated into Latin in 1682 and 

 into German in the same year. Boyle noticed all the peculiar phe- 



* Rosinus Lentilius described the properties and preparation of phosphorus from 

 England in the Ephemerides (Dec. II, An. IV, 1685 on phosphor herm^tique) , as 

 related to him by a man who had obtained the method in England. 



