NEW CONCEPTIONS IN SCIENCE 



Scarce any science has taken on so prodigious a 

 development in later years as chemistry. As a 

 science, it dates from Lavoisier, the French farmer 

 of the taxes whose head fell in the Terror. The 

 pivot of modern chemistry is the atom imagined by 

 John Dalton, a learned Quaker of Manchester, 

 whose book appeared in 1808. So vast a field does 

 this science now cover that hardly any man is 

 master of more than a part. A German chemical 

 dictionary, Beilstein's, dealing with but a single 

 branch, organic chemistry, treats of fifty thousand 

 distinct compounds. There are half a dozen other 

 important branches, each with its own huge litera- 

 ture with special journals, even. It is almost a 

 world by itself. Primacy here has shifted about 

 from one country to another throughout the cen- 

 tury, and chiefs and leaders have come from every 

 point of the compass. Obscure lands, like Sweden, 

 Norway, Russia, have been often at the fore. Yet 

 the history of this wonderful science could be 

 written in full detail without mention, perhaps, of 

 more than a single American name. It will better 

 indicate the state of the work in this country to 

 note that the work of this single American, Pro- 

 fessor Willard Gibbs, was unrecognized, was un- 

 known, until it had been dug from the Connecticut 

 archives by a Dutch chemist, after it had lain 

 buried for nearly twenty years. 



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