July 30, 1903] 



NATURE 



299 



Patani States, in which souls and ghosts are dealt 

 with; a consideration of ghosts and spirits unconnected 

 with material bodies will be published in another part. 

 The work is admirably printed, and the illustrations 

 are excellent. This first part reflects great credit on 

 the University Press of Liverpool. 



ELECTROCHEMISTRY IN AMERICA. 



'X'HE third meeting of the American Electrochemical 

 J- Society took place in New York on April i8. 

 Three meetings may seem rather a small number for 

 a society which has been in existence for more than 

 eighteen months, but the society, which has members 

 from all parts of the United States, only meets once 

 in six months, and the meetings assume the form of 

 a congress, which lasts several days. This style of 

 meeting, which might be compared to the annual meet- 

 ing of the Society of Chemical Industry, in which 

 members from all parts of the country meet together 

 each year in a different town, partly for work and 

 partly for social intercourse, has certain obvious ad- 

 vantages, in that country as well as town members 

 are able to attend; there is, however, one disadvantage, 

 and that is that papers are only published once in six 

 months. The transactions of the society are also only 

 published once in six months, hence they contain the 

 concentration of six months' work. 



The presidential address of Dr. Joseph W. Richards, 

 an abridgment of which is printed below, contains 

 several points of considerable interest. One thing 

 which will strike British electrochemists is that al- 

 though the Americans have made great progress in 

 the industrial applications of electrochemistry, yet they 

 have to admit that they owe their present position in 

 a large measure to foreign trained electrochemists. 

 Dr. Richards mourns that they are vastly behind the 

 Germans in the number of their chairs and laboratories 

 of electrochemistry. How much more, then, should 

 we in this country mourn— we have not a single chair 

 devoted to the teaching of electrochemistry, and there 

 are only two or three laboratories in the whole king- 

 dom. 



It is often said that, having very little water power 

 in this country, we can never expect to compete indus- 

 trially with other countries in electrochemical processes. 

 Dr. Richards remarks that although all countries have 

 not Niagaras, they have gas-engines, and he points 

 out some of the sources of gas supply. Finally his 

 remarks upon the value of literature, good, sound 

 literature, are worth consideration. Where is the 

 British electrochemical literature to be found? 



To live is to progress, and to progress is to live. A 

 science which does not progress petrifies. The science of 

 electrochemistry has progressed so magnificently in the last 

 decade that a mere catalogue of its achievements would 

 be a monumental compilation. Abler and better-informed 

 pens than mine have given to us recently, in presidential 

 addresses and in careful reviews, the detailed history of this 

 progress. I do not intend to attempt that task anew this 

 evening ;, my theme is an analysis of the conditions which 

 make for progress, and which I hope to make clear in all 

 their bearings on electrochemical science. 



I place discovery of new facts in electrochemical science 

 as. the corner-stone of progress in our science. Given 

 a freshly-flowing current of new electrochemical facts, 

 and all the other elements of progress have a chance 

 to exist. No less certain than this is the location of the 

 birthplace and the identity of the sponsors of these newly- 

 born facts. The birthplaces are chemical, electrical and 

 physical laboratories ; the sponsors are the investigators, 

 the searchers after truth— the professors, students, em- 

 NO. 1 761, VOL. 68] 



ployees, private investigators, and all who with the in- 

 satiable thirst for more knowledge are pushing back the 

 thick curtain of the unknown which hems us in so closely 

 on every side. The elect among these workers, the highly- 

 favoured few, are the professors of electrochemistry pro- 

 vided with well-equipped electrochemical laboratories. They 

 are in the position to do or to direct the most valuable 

 investigations, and are also under the moral obligation to 

 publish freely to the world all that they discover. The 

 giants of the electrochemical fraternity are in this class : 

 Davy, Faraday, Bunsen, Arrhenius, van 't Hoff, Ostwald, 

 Nernst, Moiss'an. The labours of such workers, given to 

 the world in their publications, form the body of electro- 

 chemical science, and their thoughts — its soul. Such are 

 the heroes of science ; men who work for the work's sake, 

 who sacrifice time, money, and often health, to increase 

 the boundaries of our knowledge, and then keep nothing 

 back. 



The German-speaking countries count up alone at their 

 universities and technical schools fifteen chairs of electro- 

 chemistry and twelve electrochemical laboratories. These, 

 we all know it, have been the source of the greater part 

 of the advance of electrochemical science in the last ten 

 years. The whole industrial electrochemical world is 

 debtor to the European electrochemical laboratories and 

 their workers, and how can that debt be requited? Surely 

 not by selfishly using all the facts and holding fast all the 

 material benefits. Not only common gratitude but also 

 self-interest unite in recommending to the captains of 

 electrochemical industry that more such laboratories be 

 built and more such chairs endowed ; money thus spent will 

 be seed which will return many fold its value to the in- 

 dustry. America has boasted that it is " The Electro- 

 chemical Centre of the World." It may be so, in the 

 development of electrochemical industries, in the amount of 

 power used and material products turned out ; but is it 

 not a fair question to ask " Where are the professors of 

 electrochemistry at our universities and how many electro- 

 chemical laboratories are at their command? " Are we not 

 out of comparison with Germany in that respect — but I trust 

 not hopelessly so? Our present flourishing condition in- 

 dustrially is largely due to our foreign-trained electro- 

 chemists and our imported literature. Shall we not, 

 through shame at contributing so little ourselves to that 

 literature, soon begin to establish chairs of electrochemistry 

 and build well-equipped laboratories to go with them? 

 Then our boast might begin to be more than the empty 

 boast of a successful money-maker ; then we may begin to 

 be an illuminating centre radiating knowledge to the rest 

 of the world. 



In place of professors and professional laboratories, how- 

 ever, America is blessed with another class of investigators 

 who are no less industrious in acquiring facts, and to whom 

 a large part of our commercial success is directly 

 ascribable ; I refer to the small army of patient investi- 

 gators in the laboratories of our industrial plants, who are 

 searching over ground not yet explored and accumulating 

 facts of value in their special industrial lines. The expense 

 of such work is borne by the corporation for which they 

 labour, and the work itself is in reality an investment made 

 in the hope of yielding financial reward. 



By means of facts, correlating, discussing and deducing 

 therefrom, we arrive at a knowledge of the laws of science, 

 the rules governing its various phenomena and according 

 to which its manifestations invariably proceed. Such de- 

 ductions are the goal of pure science ; they contain no 

 element of speculation, hypothesis or theory, and represent 

 man's deepest insight into the phenomena of nature. 



The indefatigable Faraday discovered our first funda- 

 mental laws. Ohm and Joule added to them, and numerous 

 later investigators have contributed, but we must not make 

 the mistake of thinking that there remains very little more 

 in the nature of generalisations to be discovered ; we could 

 not make a greater mistake. If facts are being discovered, 

 the recognition of unforeseen generalisations and the estab- 

 lishing of new laws are bound to follow, and thus the science 

 reaches its highest consummation. 



Such discoveries are usually the privileges and the per- 

 quisites of the experimenter and investigator, if so be that 

 he is likewise a thinker. He gets the facts at first hand, 

 and has the first chance to deduce new laws. The electro- 



