Abstract
THE history of the development of that department of science which it is now usual to call stereochemistry is extremely interesting. While it shows that great results often spring from small beginnings, it also shows that although genius may discern in apparently trivial phenomena the basis of very far-reaching ideas, it requires the united efforts of a large number of workers both to extend the applications of the idea and to render its foundation firm and secure. In 1848 Pasteur discovered that racemic acid, itself possessing no action on a ray of polarised light, is resolvable into two acids, each of which rotates the plane of polarisation in equal but opposite directions, and that this property of optical activity is associated with hemihedrism in the crystalline form. Not till more than a quarter of a century later, namely in September 1874, did Van't Hoff give to the world his ideas on the representation of chemical structure in space. Two months afterwards similar views were put forward by Le Bel. So far as it obtained any notice at all, the new theory was received chiefly with ridicule. It is now accepted by the whole chemical world.
The Arrangement of Atoms in Space.
By J. H. Van't Hoff. Second revised and enlarged edition, with a preface by Johannes Wislicenus, &c.; translated and edited by Arnold Eiloart. Pp. xi + 211. (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1898.)
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T., W. The Arrangement of Atoms in Space. Nature 58, 100 (1898). https://doi.org/10.1038/058100a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/058100a0