August 25, 1921] 



NATURE 



803 



is organised common-sense, and it is scarcely to 

 be expected that a community which has hitherto 

 had little training in the methods of science, and 

 no opportunity of cultivating that habit of mind 

 we designate as scientific, will work its oppor- 

 tunity with a maximum of economy. But the 

 .atmosphere thus created is bound to have its 

 effect upon the general intelligence, and perhaps 

 none of the many lessons of the war will prove 

 to be more fruitful or more benign in its 

 results. 



One consequence, we may hope, will be a wider 

 interest in, and a more generous appreciation of, 

 the labours of those who have enriched science 

 by discovery. Discovery begets invention, and 

 invention begets wealth and prosperity, material 

 comfort, and happiness in living. Science has 

 innumerable gifts in her horn of plenty which 

 she freely offers to her devotees who worship her 

 assiduously and disinterestedly. But these gifts, 

 precious as they are, seldom directly benefit those 

 upon whom they are first bestowed. Those who 

 receive them — the discoverers — ^give them away, 

 with little or no expectation of material reward 

 or worldly benefit to the inventors, who in their 

 turn hand them on, on terms, to the rest of the 

 community. It therefore behoves the inventors 

 and the community in general, if only in common 

 gratitude, to show some interest in the lives and 

 fortunes of those who in the unselfish pursuit of 

 truth for its own sake thus enrich their fellow- 

 men. 



The book under review appears at an oppor- 

 tune time. In it Sir William Tilden tells the life- 

 story of a number of famous chemists, from the 

 time of Boyfe down to our own era. His work 

 makes no pretension to be a history of chemistry. 

 His purpose is to make the general reader 

 acquainted with the personal history and work of 

 certain prominent chemists, whose labours may 

 be said to have been largely directed to a common 

 purpose — the elaboration of the atomic theory. 

 To apply Montaigne's phrase, he has gathered 

 a posy of other men's flowers, binding them 

 together with a silver thread of his own. This 

 thread, which serves to connect the life-histories 

 of a score of eminent chemists, is the conception 

 oT atoms as a theory of chemistry. From the 

 wealth of material to his hand it was, of course, 

 necessary to adopt some definite principle of 

 selection. To the extent that the phenomena of 

 chemistry are adequately explained by the atomic 

 theory — that it is, in fact, the bedrock upon 

 which the whole superstructure of the science 

 rests — it may be urged that the work of every 

 chemist conduces to its support, even when 

 NO. 2704, VOL. 107] 



unconsciously directed to that end. Sir William 

 Tilden has sought to draw a distinction between 

 work that he regards as indispensable and that 

 which is merely contributory but not essential to 

 the establishment of the atomic doctrine, and on 

 this ground he excludes all mention of many 

 names that by common consent are certainly to be 

 styled famous. This limitation has its difficul- 

 ties, of which the author is no doubt well aware. 

 It may be argued that the collective work of the 

 chemists, British and Continental, of the Vic- 

 torian era has done more to place the atomic 

 theory on a firm experimental basis than all the 

 labours of speculative thinkers from the time of 

 Boyle to the death of Dalton. But the life-work 

 of Laurent, Gerhardt, Stas, Kekule, Hofmann, 

 and Wurtz, as the author is constrained to point 

 out, and with evident regret, finds no place in 

 his book. On the other hand, it is difficult to 

 see how the phlogistians he deals with, with the 

 possible exception of Cavendish, contributed 

 directly to the foundation of the atomic theory. 

 Their work was for the most part wholly qualita- 

 tive and empirical. Such work as that of 

 Priestley or Scheele, for example, could afford no 

 substantial basis for such a theory, except as 

 supplying • facts which enlarged the scope of 

 the science. But this may be said of the 

 work of every chemist who makes a dis- 

 covery or pursues inquiry in the random method 

 of Priestley. 



In spite of the imperfection and limitations of 

 the basis on which it is constructed. Sir William 

 Tilden has put together a most interesting book 

 which adequately fulfils the purpose for which it 

 was written, which is to enlighten the general 

 reader concerning the personal history and work 

 of men who are distinguished for their services to 

 chemical science and whose labours have per- 

 manently contributed, and to a noteworthy and 

 memorable extent, to its development. The 

 notices are pleasantly written, and care has been 

 taken, whenever possible, to verify the biographi- 

 cal facts. The book is suitably illustrated with, 

 for the most part, well-known portraits of the 

 several chemists, and with occasional pictures of 

 their laboratories and of apparatus which they 

 employed. Perhaps the least satisfactory por- 

 trait is that of Proust. A better one is to be 

 found in Jaeger's " Elementen en i\tomen eens en 

 Thans," which deals substantially with the same 

 general theme as that of the book now reviewed, 

 but carries it down, in its latest edition, to its 

 newest developments, which are, indeed, partly 

 dealt with by Sir William Tilden in the epilogue 

 with which his book concludes. 



