The Chemist as Creator 749 



was solved by the German chemist Kekule, who saw that the sym- 

 bol of the benzene molecule should be like a ring or hexagon, in 

 which the carbon atoms are linked together, while the hydrogen 

 atoms hold on to the outside hands. 



H 



A 



H-C C-H 



A 



To explain the importance of this, we quote a paragraph 

 from Dr. Edwin E. Slosson's Creative Chemistry (1921) a 

 brilliantly successful popular exposition of chemical synthesis. 



We need not suppose that the benzene molecule if we could 

 see it would look anything like this diagram of it, but the 

 theory works and that is all the scientist asks of any theory. 

 By its use thousands of new compounds have been con- 

 structed which have proved of inestimable value to man. 

 The modern chemist is not a discoverer, he is an inventor. 

 He sits down at his desk and draws a "Kekule ring" or 

 rather hexagon. Then he rubs out an H and hooks a hitro 

 group (NO2) on to the carbon in place of it; next he rubs out 

 the O2 of the nitro group and puts in Ha; then he hitches on 

 such other elements, or carbon chains and rings, as he likes. 

 He works like an architect designing a house, and when he 

 gets a picture of the proposed compound to suit him he 

 goes into the laboratory to make it. 



Perhaps what he makes may bear the hyphenated name "sod- 

 ium-ditolyl-disazo-beta-naphthylamine-6-sulfonic-beta-naphthyl- 

 amine-3.6 disulfonate" the commercial contraction of which is 

 "Brilliant Congo Dye"! 



To sum up, the coal-tar yields ten primary products or 

 "crudes," like benzene; these have yielded some three hundred 

 "intermediates" like aniline; and from these have been created 



