CHEMISTRY: W. A. NOYES 
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close connection between chemical forces and electrical phenomena and 
spoke for the first time of "atoms of electricity." He also pointed out 
that the "sulphur of sulphuric acid must be charged with positive equiva- 
lents of electricity." In 1887 Arrhenius proposed his theory of elec- 
trolytic dissociation and with the help of Ostwald and van't Hoff the 
belief in a separation of molecules into electrically charged parts in so- 
lutions was rapidly accepted. J. J. Thompson^ gave precision to the 
atomic character of electricity in 1897 when he demonstrated the mate- 
rial character of cathode rays and the very minute mass of the cor- 
puscles carrying negative charges. Van't Hoff^ seems to have suggested 
for the first time that electrically charged atoms may play a part in 
reactions not usually considered as ionic. The same idea was proposed 
by the author^ and by Stieglitz,^ a little later. J. J. Thompson^ seems 
to have been the first to suggest that two atoms may be held together 
by the electrical foreces resulting from the transfer of an electron from 
one to the other. He assumed a shell of electrically positive matter 
within which there was a static arrangement of electrons. Abegg^ in 
an entirely independent paper published the same year, discussed the 
relation between electrons and ionization and the connection with older 
theories of Helmholtz and others. He also raises, I think for the first 
time, the question of polar and non-polar volences but seems to have 
decided that the former are more probable.^ Rutherford^^ has ad- 
vanced strong reasons for considering that atoms contain a positive 
nucleus around which electrons are rotating and this hypotheses has 
been further developed by Bohr,^^ Nicholson,^^ Moseley^^ and others. 
Physicists in general have directed their attention to rotating or 
rapidly moving electrons and to the relation between these and spectral 
lines, the disintegration of atoms and other phenomena involving in- 
dividual atoms. Chemists, on the other hand, following the sugges- 
tion of J. J. Thomspson, have considered chiefly the role which 
the valence electrons probably play in the combination of atoms. Sir 
WilHam Ramsay^^ in his address on ''The Electron as an Element" 
considered that the electron takes a position between the two atoms 
which are held in combination. In a very recent paper, probably 
the last which he wrote, he elaborates this thought further and 
describes models to illustrate the magnetic attractions which would 
result from electrons rotating in contiguous parts of two molecules. 
The magneton theory of the structure of the atom has also been de- 
veloped elaborately by Parson. It cannot account for ionization, 
where, if we accept the electron theory at all, electrons must be trans- 
ferred completely from the positive atom or group to the negative. 
