June 26, 1908] 



SCIENCE 



979 



pie agree as to what tlie future develop- 

 ment of chemistry is to be, and it is prob- 

 able that any one man would give you a 

 different answer if the question were put 

 to him at an interval of five years. De- 

 pending on whom you ask, you will be 

 told that the really important thing is: 

 organic chemistry, inorganic chemistry, 

 physical chemistry, electrochemistry, pho- 

 tochemistry, physiological chemistry, in- 

 dustrial chemistry, or what not. I could 

 even name one man who has believed all 

 these things at one time or another. It is 

 easy to see that predictions like these 

 are the results of opinion that exists. 

 The same diversity of opinion as to what 

 is fundamentally important appears very 

 clearly when we remember that the 

 Carnegie Institution is not making any 

 large grant to chemistry, for the simple 

 reason that the chemists of the country 

 can not agree as to what problem or group 

 of problems should be attacked. My task 

 to-day is to point out to you what the 

 real future of chemistry will be and to 

 make you see that my prophecy is the one 

 that will come true. 



We shall reach our goal most quickly 

 by what is at first sight an indirect way. 

 At the dedication of a chemical, physical, 

 engineering, geological, biological or medi- 

 cal laboratory, it is customary to have ad- 

 dresses, even as now ; and it is the ortho- 

 dox thing to say that the most important 

 of all the sciences is the science to be 

 studied in that laboratory, whether it be 

 chemistry, physics, engineering, geology, 

 biology, medicine or something else. I 

 sympathize fully with the practise and I 

 intend to do the same thing myself to-day. 

 You will admit, however, that the people 

 who make addresses of this type at the 

 dedication of laboratories, can not all be 

 right when they talk like that. Some of 

 them must be exaggerating just a little, 

 and in order to acquit the chemist of any 



such a charge, we must first consider the 

 relation of chemistry to the other sciences. 



We will define chemistry as a study of all 

 properties and changes of matter depend- 

 ing on the nature of the substances con- 

 cerned. This definition is wider than the 

 usual one. It is one that I have used for 

 years and it is one which Sir William 

 Ramsay suggested but did not make in his 

 "Introduction to the Study of Physical 

 Chemistry." It follows from this defini- 

 tion that physics is a subdivision of chem- 

 istry; an important and interesting sub- 

 division, it is true, but only a subdivision. 

 Chemistry includes all of what is known 

 as physics except the law of gravitation, 

 the laws of motion, and a few other ab- 

 stract formulations. Everything else that 

 gives life and interest to physics is chem- 

 istry pure and simple. I admit that this 

 point of view is not popular among my 

 colleagues, the physicists, but their ob- 

 jections are natural enough without being 

 valid. Physics was a flourishing science at 

 the time when chemistry, in the narrower 

 sense of the word, was of very little im- 

 portance. In the case of anything that is 

 expanding and developing, it seems to me 

 axiomatic that you must have the part 

 before we have the whole, and that in the 

 first stages the part will seem the whole. 

 In 1600 the men of Great Britain were the 

 whole of the Anglo-Saxon race. To-day 

 they are only a part of it; an important 

 part, it is true, but only a part. Let us 

 try another illustration. As children we 

 were told that "great oaks from little 

 acorns grow." If you only have the 

 acorn, of course, it is the important thing ; 

 but later one sees that the acorn is merely 

 an interesting subdivision or product of 

 the oak and that is all it is. We may, 

 therefore, class physics as a subdivision of 

 chemistry. 



When we come to engineering, it is clear 

 that we are dealing with applied chem- 



