THE  AMERICAN 
JOURNAL  OF  PHARMACY 
NOVEMBER,  1895. 
THE  HISTORY  OF  ARGON  AND  HELIUM.  ... 
By  Alfred  R.  h.  Dohmk,  Ph.D. 
Toward  the  close  of  the  year  1894  Lord  Rayleigh,  professor  of 
physics  at  the  University  of  Cambridge,  and  secretary  of  the  Royal 
Society  of  London,  published  a  paper1  in  the  Proceedings  of  the 
Royal  Society,  in  which  he  described  some  anomalies  encountered  in 
determinations  of  the  density  of  nitrogen  gas.  Lord  Rayleigh  com- 
municated his  curious  experiences  to  Prof.  William  Ramsay,  profes- 
sor of  chemistry,  University  College,  London,  and  together  they 
undertook  to  solve  the  intricate  and  intensely  interesting  problems 
On  January  31,  1 895,  they  read  a  paper  before  the  Royal  Society^ 
entitled,  "Argon,  a  New  Constituent  of  the  Atmosphere,"  and  the 
result  was  that  the  scientific  world  in  particular,  as  well  as  the  world 
in  general,  were  set  on  edge,  unbalanced  as  it  were,  and  neither  have 
yet  fully  recovered  their  equilibrium.  To  think  that  for  more  than 
a  century  people  had  been  daily  breathing,  handling,  testing,  ana- 
lyzing and  discussing  the  all-pervading  atmosphere  of  our  planet,  and 
had  not,  until  the  year  1894,  discovered  that  it  contained  something; 
besides  oxygen,  nitrogen,  carbon  dioxide,  water  vapor  and  nitrous 
acid  was  touching  that  world  in  a  very  tender  spot,  and  it  felt  hurt- 
Facts  are  facts,  however,  and  never  respect  feelings.  We  may  very 
properly  consider  the  discovery  of  these  English  scientists  as  epoch- 
making,  because,  as  we  shall  see,  they  introduce  into  the  science  of 
chemistry  something  that  is  entirely  new  to  it.    Lord  Rayleigh  had 
aRayleigh,  "On  an  anomaly  encountered  in  determinations  of  the  density 
of  nitrogen  gas."    Proc.  Roy.  Soc,  55,  340  (1894). 
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