222 



NA TURE 



[December 23, 1909 



science, for there was hardly a single movement con- 

 nected with the advancement or spread of physical 

 science which did not find in him a generous and, at 

 times, an enthusiastic and inspiriting supporter. In 

 one other respect, too, his substance was always at 

 the service of science. No appeal from those who 

 enjoved his confidence, or in whose judgment he had 

 learned to trust, on behalf of the weak brother who 

 had fallen by the wayside, was ever made in vain ; 

 and numberless acts of kindness, of sympathy, and 

 of substantial help of which the world knows little 

 or nothing, and of which even the recipients in many 

 cases never knew the source, are recorded to his 

 credit. 



But it was not only by his wealth that Dr. Mond 

 served science. In the organisation of science and 

 in her councils he gave of his mental and intellec- 

 tual powers with the same unstinted liberality that 

 he gave of his material possessions. His knowledge 

 and experience, his remarkable business aptitudes, 

 his skill in the management of men, his faculty for 

 organisation and direction, were freely at the ser- 

 vice of every scientific society that had the good for- 

 tune to enlist his sympathy, or the wisdom to invite 

 his cooperation. 



Ludwig Mond was born in Cassel in 1839, and, 

 after having passed through the Polytechnic of his 

 native place, he went to Marburg to study chemistry 

 under Kolbe. Thence he repaired to Heidelberg to 

 work under Bunsen, and to enjoy his full share of 

 that alternation of study and play — each as strenuous 

 as the other — which characterises the university life 

 of that famous seat of learning. At Heidelberg he 

 took his degree, and, attaching himself to technology, 

 obtained situations in chemical works in Germany. 

 At about this time he was attracted by a problem 

 which had long baffled practical chemists, namely, 

 the recovery of the sulphur employed incidentally in 

 the Leblanc process in the conversion of common 

 salt into soda, and which had passed from the oil 

 of vitriol into the bye-product known as alkali-waste. 

 He devised and patented a process for treating alkali 

 waste, which, although long since superseded by 

 others more economical in working, had a consider- 

 ably measure of success for a time. He came to 

 England with a view to the introduction of his method 

 into the great alkali works of South Lancashire, 

 Tyneside, and the Clyde district, and it was adopted 

 b5' a number of manufacturers, notably in Widnes, in 

 Newcastle, and by the Tennants of Glasgow. After a 

 short stay in Holland, where he erected, and for a time 

 rnanaged, a factory to work the Leblanc process, he 

 returned to this country and entered the chemical 

 works of Hutchinson and Earle at Widnes. 



Dr. Mond was then twenty-eight years of age. 

 In the previous year he had married his cousin, Miss 

 Frida Loewenthal, and he settled down in the most 

 dismal of all the manufacturing towns in Lancashire 

 with the intention of devoting his talents and energy 

 to the business of manufacturing alkali and the 

 other products commonly associated with it. At this 

 period soda was exclusively made in this country by 

 the Leblanc process, which involves the use of sul- 

 phuric acid and the production of large quantities of 

 hydrochloric acid, as well as the formation of the 

 alkali waste already referred to. Other processes had 

 been suggested, and some had actually been brought 

 into successful operation, as, for example, the cryolite 

 process invented by Julius Thomsen, of Copenhagen, 

 and worked so far back as 1857. It was known that 

 common salt might be changed to some extent into 

 bicarbonate of soda by the action of carbonic acid in 

 piresence of ammonia. Dyar and Hemming had 

 worked out a method based on this principle, but 

 their efforts to compete with the Leblanc soda re- 

 NO. 2095, VOL. 82] 



suited in failure, and the firm was ruined. In theory 

 the process was seductively simple, but all attempts 

 to determine the practical conditions needed to en- 

 sure complete conversion were unavailing until the 

 method was systematically investigated by two young 

 Belgian chemical engineers, the brothers Solvay, 

 who, in the early 'seventies, devised the modification 

 of the Dyar and Hemming process which has since 

 been known as the ammonia-soda or Solvay process. 



Dr. Mond was afforded an opportunity of judging 

 the practicability of the process as thus improved, 

 and so sanguine was he of its commercial possibilities 

 that he determined to embark his little capital in 

 acquiring a licence to work the ammonia-soda process 

 in England. He enlisted the sympathy of his friend 

 Mr. J. T. Brunner (now the Right Hon. Sir John 

 Brunner, Bart., M.P.) with the enterprise, and the 

 result was the formation of the firm of Brunner, 

 Mond and Co., who acquired the Winnington Hall 

 estate, near Northwich, and erected their works 

 over the Cheshire salt deposits. The success of 

 this firm has been phenomenal, and to-day the 

 Winnington works is one of the largest, if not 

 actually the largest, manufactory of the kind in the 

 world. Much of this success was due, in the outset, 

 to the genius and inventive skill of Dr. Mond. In 

 the beginning innumerable difficulties were met with. 

 During the first twelve months, as Sir John Brunnei" 

 recently said, everything' that could explode exploded, 

 and everything that would break broke, until the 

 partners had little left but their credit and their 

 licence from Ernest .Solvay. Thanks in large 

 measure to the energy and resourcefulness of Dr. 

 Mond, these troubles were circumvented, and in a 

 surprisingly short space of time the process became 

 a magnificent success. Leblanc soda would have be- 

 come a thing of the past had it not been for its 

 bye-product, the hydrochloric acid, which alone saved 

 it from extinction. 



If the Leblanc process wasted its sulphur, the 

 ammonia-soda process equally wasted its chlorine,' 

 and Dr. Mond made repeated attempts to remove this 

 blot on the theoretical cycle of operations upon which 

 the method is based. At one time it seemed as if 

 success had attended his efforts, but the result showed 

 that the economical production of bleaching powder 

 from calcium chloride under existing conditions is a 

 problem which still remains to be solved. Whether 

 the ammonia-soda process has within it the basis of 

 permanent success, time alone can show. As regards 

 the production of ammonia and the means taken for 

 its recovery and preservation, it is difficult to see 

 where fresh economies are possible. In the mean- 

 time, new, or at least improved, sources of energy are 

 rapidly becoming available, and every decade shows 

 progress in the methods of transforming this energy 

 into work. Dr. Mond himself devised plans for 

 greatly augmenting its supply, and in the Mond 

 gas there is a relatively cheap source of power which, 

 while it may contribute incidentally to the supply of 

 the all-essential ammonia, may indirectlv undermine 

 the stability of the very process with which his name 

 is primarily and more particularly associated. The 

 economical production of alkali from common salt bv 

 electrolytic methods in this country is largely a ques- 

 tion of the transformation of the potential energy in 

 coal into electrical power, and although theoretically 

 a definite quantity of ammonia is capable of turning 

 an indefinitely large quantity of salt into soda, this 

 can only be effected by the expenditure of energy 

 which itself costs money to produce and apply. 



Dr. Mond had a remarkable aptitude for pushing 

 his experimental inquiries into abstract fields of re- 

 search, and for promptly turning the results to prac- 

 tical account. His discovery, in collaboration with 



