JOURNAL 



Elisha Mitchell Scientific Society 



(Organ of the North Carolina Academy of Science) 

 TWENTIETH YEAR 



J904 



INORGANIC CHEMISTRY AND THE PHASE RULE* 



WILDER D. BANCROFT. Ph.D. 

 Professor of Physical Chemistry, Cornell University. 



As we look back over the history of chemistry, we see 

 always the result of the two opposing forces, one that compli- 

 cates and one that simplifies. The discovery of new facts 

 makes the science more complex and more difficult to grasp. 

 The discovery of new relations makes the science more simple 

 because it enables us to correlate facts and thus to get a bet- 

 ter grasp of the subject. The effect of the generalization in 

 simplifying a single science or in unifying a group of sciences 

 is overlooked by those who complain that the scientific man 

 of the future will be a narrow specialist, knowing only a small 

 part of a single division of one science. While this is always 

 possible, it does not seem probable to me and I think it is 

 much more likely that the chemist of the next generation 

 will be a much better all-round man than any of us can hope 

 to be. 



In inorganic chemistry there is one great simplifying gen- 

 eralization with which we are all familiar, the Periodic Law. 

 It has its imperfections and there are some who think that its 



*A lecture delivered before the Scientific Faculty aud students, Univer- 

 sity of North Carolina, February 12th, 1904. 



