Essay Review: The Nature of the Chemical Atom: The History of Valency

Partington J. R. , A history of chemistry, vol. iv (London & New York, 1964).

Ihde Aaron J. , The development of modern chemistry (New York, 1964).

Thackray A. W. , “The chemistry of history”, History of science, v (1966), 124–34.

The other being Palmer W. G. , A history of the concept of valency to 1930, (Cambridge University Press, 1965).

Although it makes no sense to say that: It is interesting to note the reasoning which led [Werner] to an octahedral structure; it was just the simplest way of arranging six atoms round one centre. In this respect his argument strikingly anticipates some aspects of present ligand field theory (p. 221). In that case, so did Dalton with his simplicity rules.

Indeed, it is central to the history of nineteenth-century chemistry as a whole, at all theoretical and practical levels. Nor should it be thought, as the standard accounts tend to suggest, that Avogadro's and Ampere's ideas went entirely forgotten for some fifty years after 1811. Most of the chemists who played any important part in the development of chemical theory in the first half of the century were demonstrably aware of the hypothesis, even if they made no use of it. The question that should therefore be asked is not why it was not known, but why it was not used. This is a question that I myself hope to examine in detail in the near future.

Freund Ida , The study of chemical composition: An account of its method and historical development (Cambridge University Press, 1904; reprinted New York, 1968), 544.

For a review of these see Cassebaum Kauffman , “The periodic system of the chemical elements: The search for its discoverer”, Isis, lxii (1971), 314–27.

There are 219 footnotes to the chapter on variable valency.

Freund , The study of chemical composition, 544, 535–6.

Palmer W. G. , Valency, classical and modern (Cambridge University Press, 1944; 2nd ed., 1959).