PREFACE 



THIS volume is published as a memorial to Morris Loeb, 

 a man of rare gifts who was called in his prime from his 

 many-sided activities. The book will serve to make more 

 accessible the thoughtful and suggestive writings of one of 

 the American pioneers of the new physical chemistry. 



All the publications of the late Professor Loeb bearing 

 upon scientific topics have here been brought together, 

 except a few brief reviews in Italian possessing only tran- 

 sient interest; and there have been added such parts of 

 several essays found in manuscript as he might have been 

 willing to have printed. The collected papers have been 

 divided into two groups; the first includes those of a gen- 

 eral character (such as essays, lectures, and reviews), and 

 the second those recording the results of his original experi- 

 mental researches, which are more technical in their nature 

 and less generally comprehensible. This division into two 

 groups was made in order that essays having general interest 

 should not be lost to the average reader by being hidden 

 among scientific papers beyond his comprehension. 



In each group the papers have been arranged in chrono- 

 logical order. Of those found in manuscript, parts of three 

 discussions of the same subject have been welded together so 

 as to make one consistent essay and placed at the beginning 

 of the first group under the title "The Fundamental Ideas 

 of Physical Chemistry." The first part of this essay was 

 evidently given as the introductory lecture of a course on 

 physical chemistry at Clark University in 1889. Each of 

 the three papers was fragmentary; but fortunately the gaps 



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