Abstract
FORTY years ago, the first German edition of Ladenburg's “Lectures on the History of the Development of Chemistry during the past 100 Years” was published. This was a relatively small book of 320 pages, which presented, in the course of fourteen lectures, a carefully drawn and evenly balanced sketch of the progress of chemistry subsequent to the time of Lavoisier. At the date of its publication it was unique in dealing, in a logical and consistent manner, with the progress of the atomic theory in its application both to inorganic and to organic chemistry, and in serving at least as an introduction to the particularly difficult and complicated period in the history of organic chemistry which began in the 'thirties and extended to the late 'fifties or early 'sixties of last century. It was not until about four years later that this period was dealt with, a good deal more elaborately, by Kopp in his “Development of Chemistry in Recent Times” (1873). A specially valuable feature of Ladenburg's lectures was the abundance of references to the literature, which tended to encourage the reader to extend his knowledge of particular branches of the subject by consulting the original papers of the various authors. A second German edition was called for in 1887, when the original book was revised, and was extended by the addition of a fifteenth lecture.
Histoire du Développment de la Chimie depuis Lavoisier jusqu'a nos Jours.
By Prof. A. Ladenburg. Traduit sur la 4e édition allemande. By Prof. A. Corvisy. Pp. v + 388. (Paris: A. Hermann et Fils, 1909.) Price 15 francs.
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Histoire du Développment de la Chimie depuis Lavoisier jusqu'a nos Jours . Nature 81, 96 (1909). https://doi.org/10.1038/081096a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/081096a0