Volume 2

Recent advances in organic chemistry / by Alfred W. Stewart.

  • Stewart, Alfred W. (Alfred Walter), 1880-1947.
Date:
1931
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Recent advances in organic chemistry / by Alfred W. Stewart. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    17/458 (page 1)
    RECENT ADVANCES IN ORGANIC CHEMISTRY CHAPTER I ORGANIC CHEMISTRY IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY In the form in which it exists to-day, organic chemistry may be said to take its root in the work of Frankland 1 at the middle of last century. Once the doctrine of the constancy of valency was accepted, the way was open for Couper2 and Kekule3 to bring order into the vast mass of material which had been accumulated in earlier times ; while, later, van’t Hoff 4 and Le Bel5 carried the ideas of molecular arrangement out of two dimensions into three and laid the foundation of our present views. Following in the track of these pioneers, the chemists of the latter half of the nineteenth century rapidly developed the theoretical side of the subject; while, on the other hand, the modern formula) lent to synthetical work a certainty which had previously been unknown. Despite the Briarean efforts of the synthetic school, it is safe to say that the latter half of the nineteenth century will be regarded as a time when theoretical speculation played the main part in the development of the subject. Of the hundred thousand organic compounds prepared during that time, the majority were still-born and their epitaphs are inscribed in 1 Frankland, Phil. Trans., 1852, 142, 417. 2 Couper, Phil. Mag., 1858, iv., 16, 104. 3 Kekule, Annalen, 1866, 137, 129. 4 van’t Hoff, Voorstell tot uitbreiding der structuur formules in de ruimie (1874). 5 Le Bel, Bull. Soc, chim., 1874, ii., 22, 377.