Abstract
The eight papers, together with the introductory address L. Anson, presented at the two-day cohfererffcle on ‘Surface-Active Agents’ held by the and Chemistry Section of the New York Academy of Sciences in January 1945, have now been published (Ann. New York Acad. Sci., 46, 347; 1946). Almost all the surface-active agents referred to were water-soluble substances which, even in small concentrations, lower the surface tension of water considerably. The properties of surface-active agents, how they are measured and how they are related to structure, were the topics discussed on the first day of ttie conference. Papers on these subjects were contributed by A. W. Ralston, E. K. Fischer and D. M. Gans, D. Price, and L. Shedlovsky. On the second day, the applications of surface-active agents to biology, medicine and industry were dealt with, E. I. Valko and R. D. Hotchkiss lecturing on the biological and medical applications; M. H. Hassialis and R. R. Ackley on the industrial applications. In the introduction, it is pointed out that although surface-active agents have been known for some time as chemical substances, it is only relatively recently that they have become available as cheap commercial compounds. Many such agents have been prepared and many industrial applications discovered, mostly in industrial laboratories, but basic scientific work on pure substances has been very greatly neglected. Indeed, it was lack of sufficient knowledge of the properties of pure surface-active agents that prevented any useful theoretical discussion of the relation between structure and properties. The object of the conference was to stimulate interest and to put the understanding of surface-active agents and their applications on a better scientific basis; the publication of the proceedings this conference on surface-active agents should be of considerable value in guiding workers in this field as to the choice of suitable research problems.
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Surface-Active Agents. Nature 158, 580 (1946). https://doi.org/10.1038/158580b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/158580b0