TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION B. : PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 161 



SECTION B: CHEMISTEY. 



President of the Section: Professor P. Phillips Bedson, D.Sc. 



TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 9. 

 The President delivered the following Address : — 



In again taking up the work of this Section, after an interval of three years, a 

 discontinuity without parallel in the annals of the Association, it is natural that 

 our thoughts should turn to the past, and in so doing we are reminded of the 

 gaps in the ranks of those who were accustomed to contribute to the work of 

 our Section. In 1916 we met under a shadow caused by the death of Sir W. 

 Ramsay, whose genius has added in so many ways to our science. And to-day 

 we have to record the loss of one who in his long life contributed in a variety 

 of Avays to the advancement of chemistry, and to whom we owe an addition 

 to the number of elementary substances in the discovery of thallium, one of 

 the early fruits of the use of the spectroscope. The chemistry of the rare 

 earths has been especially illumined by the researches of Sir William Crookes. 

 With physicists we would join in a tribute to the memory of Lord Eayleigh, 

 amongst whose experimental researches is one of special interest to chemists — 

 namely, the revelation of the existence of argon, of which discovery Sir J. J. 

 Thomson has recently written that it was not made ' by a happy accident, or by 

 the application of new and more powerful methods than those at the disposal of 

 his predecessors, but by that of the oldest of chemical methods — the use of the 

 balance.' 



In this connection it is but right that, despite the feelings engendered by 

 the war, I should refer to the passing of two great chemists — Baeyer and Fischer. 

 The former died some two years ago, and the latter within the past. few months. 

 Each of them has advanced by his experimental researches the progress of 

 organic chemistry, and has brought illumination into many of the obscure 

 departments of this branch of science. The field of investigation latterly culti- 

 vated by Fischer has revived an interest in the ' vital ' side of organic chemistry 

 as distinguished from the study of the chemistry of the carbon compounds. 

 Moreover, there are many British chemists, amongst them some of the most 

 distinguished, who, as students, received guidance and inspiration from the 

 teaching of Baeyer or of Fischer, and with them w© gratefully acknowledge our 

 indebtedness. 



Fifty years ago Mendeleeff communicated to the Russian Chemical Society 

 a memoir which has exercised a profound influence on chemical philosophy, and 

 continues to serve as a guide in the interpretation of research and speculations 

 on the nature of the elements. Without entering on the somewhat vexed ques- 

 tion as to w^hom should be assigned the credit of the discovery of the Periodic 

 Law, I trust I shall not be considered unmindful of the claims of Newlands, 

 by adopting the traditional history, and, as is usual, associate this discovery 

 with the name of Mendeleeff, and consequently we may look on this year as the 

 Jubilee of the Periodic Law. Although there is already abundant special litera- 

 ture dealing with this subject, and the periodic system has been assimilated into 

 the teaching of the science and is dealt with in the text-books of chemistry, in 

 some of which it forms the basis of the system employed in the exposition of the 



