Chemical discovery and invention in the twentieth century / [Sir William Augustus Tilden].

  • William A. Tilden
Date:
[1916]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Chemical discovery and invention in the twentieth century / [Sir William Augustus Tilden]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    23/626 (page 17)
    CHEMICAL DISCOVERY AND INVENTION IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY INTRODUCTION In selecting the subjects to be dealt with in the following pages I have been influenced by the reflection that the nature of the operations in which the chemist is engaged, the objects he has in view, the subjects and methods of study, and the uses to which his theories may be applied are still very little understood by the public. I am therefore in hopes that my readers may be assisted in forming new views about all these subjects, and any confusion existing in their minds concerning them may be cleared away. Considerable enlightenment may be hoped for from the fact that in nearly all the universities in the world at least one professor of chemistry is now to be found, while in most of the modern universities it is recognised that the subject extends over too wide a field to be efficiently cultivated by one man, and three main divisions are generally recognised, namely, inorganic, organic, and physical chemistry. To these are sometimes added departments of applied chemistry in which the relations of systematic chemistry to industry or manufacture, such as fuel, metallurgy, dyeing, and bleaching, etc., are studied. But the extension of knowledge from the universities to the mass of the people is still a slow process, and notwithstanding the quicken¬ ing effect which recent events have produced on the public mind, in England at any rate, it will be long before the practical economic importance of a knowledge of chemistry will be fully recognised by government departments, municipalities, and the public generally. The ignorance of scientific things which exists among people B