CHEMISTRY 81 



insurance or flying machines as soon as the problem can be 

 stated in a sufficiently precise form. 



At this point I may be permitted to say a few words 

 about the relation of physics to chemistry. As was asked last 

 Tuesday : What is physics, What is chemistry ? is in many 

 cases very much a matter of attitude. There is a tendency 

 with some investigators, as soon as a phenomenon can be sim- 

 plified, that is to say, so precisely defined as to admit of it? 

 investigation by mathematical procedures, to call it a chemical- 

 physical, if not a mathematical-physical problem and let its 

 investigation be further conducted as was said recently of 

 some of Ostwald's work with test tubes filled with ink and 

 not with chemical reagents. It may have been this remark 

 about Ostwald which led one of the leading American chemists 

 a few weeks ago to protest that he was not an electro-chemist 

 or a physical chemist, but simply a chemist. Chemical methods 

 are similar to those of physics. The balance, the meter, the 

 watch, the furnace, the air pump, the electrometer, the spectro- 

 scope, et cetera, et cetera, are instruments common to chemical 

 and physical laboratories, and mathematics more or less dif- 

 ficult is used by both physicists and chemists. 



Physicists and chemists are working at the same problems 

 to-day, so that at times the initiated cannot tell where to class 

 a particular worker — whether as physicist or chemist. 



So much is this the case that the German and English 

 electrical-physical-chemical-engineering societies which are 

 represented in the United States by the Electro-chemical So- 

 ciety call themselves respectively the Bunsen and Faraday So- 

 cieties, so that any subject in the debatable land between 

 physics, chemistry, electrical and mechanical engineering may 

 come within their ken. 



There is room for both branches of science and though 

 their initials are P and C I do not think, even though some 

 of the phenomena are connected with positive and negative 



