CHEMICAL 

 DISCOVERY AND INVENTION 



IN THE 



TWENTIETH CENTURY 

 INTRODUCTION 



IN selecting the subjects to be dealt with in the following pages 

 I have been influenced by the reflection that the nature of the 

 operations in which the chemist is engaged, the objects he has 

 in view, the subjects and methods of study, and the uses to 

 which his theories may be applied are still very little understood 

 by the public. I am therefore in hopes that my readers may be 

 assisted in forming new views about all these subjects, and any 

 confusion existing in their minds concerning them may be cleared 

 away. Considerable enlightenment may be hoped for from the 

 fact that in nearly all the universities in the world at least one 

 professor of chemistry is now to be found, while in most of the 

 modern universities it is recognised that the subject extends 

 over too wide a field to be efficiently cultivated by one man, and 

 three main divisions are generally recognised, namely, inorganic, 

 organic, and physical chemistry. To these are sometimes added 

 departments of applied chemistry in which the relations of 

 systematic chemistry to industry or manufacture, such as fuel, 

 metallurgy, dyeing, and bleaching, etc., are studied. But the 

 extension of knowledge from the universities to the mass of the 

 people is still a slow process, and notwithstanding the quicken- 

 ing effect which recent events have produced on the public mind, 

 in England at any rate, it will be long before the practical 

 economic importance of a knowledge of chemistry will be fully 

 recognised by government departments, municipalities, and the 

 public generally. 



The ignorance of scientific things which exists among people 



