User:Carcharoth/Notes on physical chemistry

This page is for notes on a possible rewrite of physical chemistry.

The World of Physical Chemistry
Notes on the first edition of The World of Physical Chemistry (1993, OUP, Keith J. Laidler). The 1995 edition can be partially previewed at Google Books.

This book is 476 pages, with ten chapters and four appendices and an index. Each chapter ends with a useful list of publications for further reading, and several of the chapters contain tables giving brief timelines ('highlights') for the area of physical chemistry covered in that chapter. The first three chapters cover general and introductory material (including sections on the meaning of the term physical chemistry, on journals, and on the early history that led to the emergence of physical chemistry), followed by seven chapters on specific areas of physical chemistry.


 * Chapter 1: The Origins of Physical Chemistry
 * Chapter 2: Communication in the Physical Sciences
 * Chapter 3: The Growth of the Physical Sciences
 * Chapter 4: Thermodynamics
 * Chapter 5: Kinetic Theory and Statistical Mechanics
 * Chapter 6: Chemical Spectroscopy
 * Chapter 7: Electrochemistry
 * Chapter 8: Chemical Kinetics
 * Chapter 9: Colloid and Surface Chemistry
 * Chapter 10: Quantum Chemistry


 * Appendices
 * Scientific periodicals : giving the full names of journals abbreviated elsewhere in the book.
 * References and notes : a massive compendium of primary references.
 * Biographical notes : collection of brief biographies of 146 scientists.
 * References for biographies : list of sources used for writing the biographical notes.


 * Index
 * Biographical entries are bolded, making it easier to locate them.

Additional notes
Extending the summary above, the other materials of immediate interest are: (i) the tables giving timelines of discoveries within various subdisciplines; (ii) one of the diagrams provided; and (iii) the 181 scientists for which biographies are provided (146 in an appendix and 35 longer biographies in boxes in the main text).

The tables, diagram, and biographies are summmarised below.


 * Tables
 * Table 1.1 - Some experimental techniques in physical chemistry (p.20)
 * Table 3.1 - Highlights in classical mechanics (p.58)
 * Table 4.1 - Highlights in thermodynamics (p.84)
 * Table 5.1 - Highlights in kinetic theory and statistical mechanics (p.143)
 * Table 6.1 - Highlights in chemical spectroscopy (p.165)
 * Table 7.1 - Highlights in electrochemistry (p.196)
 * Table 8.1 - Highlights in chemical kinetics (p.233)
 * Table 9.1 - Highlights in colloid and surface chemistry (p.290)
 * Table 10.1 - Highlights in quantum chemistry (p.315)
 * Table 10.3 - Key publications dealing with electronic theories of valency (p.340)


 * Diagram
 * Figure 8.1 - [diagram showing ranges and year of discovery for chemical and physical processes] (p.272)

The 35 people listed here have extended biographies within the main text of the book.
 * Biographies (text)
 * Isaac Newton
 * Pierre-Simon Laplace
 * Mary Somerville
 * Robert Boyle
 * Joseph Black
 * Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot
 * James Joule
 * William Thomson
 * Rudolf Clausius
 * Josiah Gibbs
 * Hermann von Helmholtz
 * Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff
 * James Clerk Maxwell
 * Ludwig Boltzmann
 * Robert Bunsen
 * William Allen Miller
 * John William Draper
 * Gerhard Herzberg
 * Michael Faraday
 * Svante August Arrhenius
 * Friedrich Wilhelm Ostwald
 * Walther Nernst
 * Augustus George Vernon Harcourt
 * Henry Eyring
 * Elizabeth Fulhame
 * David Leonard Chapman
 * George Porter
 * Cyril Norman Hinshelwood
 * John Charles Polanyi
 * Benjamin Franklin
 * Agnes Pockels
 * Irving Langmuir
 * Niels Henrik David Bohr
 * Erwin Schrodinger
 * Walter Heinrich Heitler

This appendix contains 37 pages with short biographies of the following 146 people.
 * Biographies (appendix)
 * Richard Abegg
 * Guillaume Amontons
 * Thomas Andrews
 * Anders Jonas Angstrom
 * Dominique Francois Jean Arago
 * Henry Edward Armstrong
 * Amadeo Avogadro
 * Herbert Brereton Baker
 * Johann Jakob Balmer
 * Alexandre Edmond Becquerel
 * Jons Jakob Berzelius
 * Niels Janniksen Bjerrum
 * Charles Blagden
 * Max Bodenstein
 * Max Born
 * Robert Holford Macdowall Bosanquet
 * Roger Joseph Boscovich
 * Wiebold Frans Brandsma
 * Johannes Nicolaus Bronsted
 * Charles Rugeley Bury
 * John Alfred Valentine Butler
 * Stanislao Cannizzaro
 * Anthony Carlisle
 * Britton Chance
 * Jens Anton Christiansen
 * Benoît Paul Émile Clapeyron
 * William Crookes
 * John Dalton
 * William Cecil Dampier
 * John Frederic Daniell
 * Humphrey Davy
 * Harry Medforth Dawson
 * Peter Joseph Wilhelm Debye
 * John Theophilus Desaguliers
 * James Dewar
 * Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac
 * Harold Baily Dixon
 * Johann Wolfgang Dobereiner
 * Walter Dux
 * Manfred Eigen
 * William Esson
 * Meredith Gwynne Evans
 * Thomas Ewan
 * Armand Hippolyte Louis Fizeau
 * Jean Bernard Leon Foucault
 * Joseph Fraunhofer
 * John Freind
 * Luigi Galvani
 * Joseph-Louis Gay-Lussac
 * William Gilbert
 * Louis Georges Gouy
 * Thomas Graham
 * Stephen Gray
 * Hans Georg Grimm
 * Theodor Christian Johann Dietrich von Grotthuss
 * William Robert Grove
 * Stephen Hales
 * Louis Plack Hammett
 * Werner Karl Heisenberg
 * John Herapath
 * John Frederick William Herschel
 * Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel
 * Karl Ferdinand Herzfeld
 * Jaroslav Heyrovsky
 * Johann Wilhelm Hittorf
 * Robert Hooke
 * August Friedrich Horstmann
 * Erich Huckel
 * Ernst Pascual Jordan
 * John Keill
 * Gustav Robert Kirchoff
 * Friedrich Wilhelm Georg Kohlrausch
 * Philip Abraham Kohnstamm
 * Johann Heinrich Lambert
 * Arthur Lapworth
 * Antoine Laurent Lavoisier
 * Gilbert Newton Lewis
 * William Cudmore McCullach Lewis
 * Frederick Alexander Lindemann
 * George Downing Liveing
 * Joseph Norman Lockyer
 * Oliver Joseph Lodge
 * Mikhail Vasilevich Lomonosov
 * Fritz London
 * John William Lubbock
 * Rene Marcelin
 * Edme Mariotte
 * Julius Robert Mayer
 * Thomas Melvill
 * William Hallowes Miller
 * Samuel Roslington Milner
 * Henry Gwyn Jeffreys Moseley
 * William Nicholson
 * Ronald George Wreyford Norrish
 * Arthur Amos Noyes
 * Friedrich Adolf Paneth
 * Linus Carl Pauling
 * Jean Baptiste Perrin
 * Leopold Pfaundler
 * Percival Spencer Umfreville Pickering
 * Michael Polanyi
 * Baden Powell
 * Henry Power
 * Joseph Priestley
 * William John Macquorn Rankine
 * Francois Marie Raoult
 * John William Strutt Rayleigh
 * Henri Victor Regnault
 * Francis Owen Rice
 * James Rice
 * Eric Keightley Rideal
 * Johann Wilhelm Ritter
 * Peter Mark Roget
 * Hendrik Willem Bakhuis Roozeboom
 * Henry Enfield Roscoe
 * Francis John Worsley Roughton
 * Johannes Robert Rydberg
 * Frans Eppo Cornelius Scheffer
 * Arthur Schuster
 * Nikolai Nikolaevich Semenov
 * Nevil Vincent Sidgwick
 * Anton Skrabal
 * Arnold Johannes Wilhelm Sommerfeld
 * Balfour Stewart
 * George Gabriel Stokes
 * George Johnstone Stoney
 * Julius Tafel
 * William Henry Fox Talbot
 * Hugh Stott Taylor
 * Louis Jacques Thenard
 * George Paget Thomson
 * Joseph John Thomson
 * Richard Chase Tolman
 * Richard Towneley
 * John Sealy Edward Townsend
 * Max Trautz
 * Johannes Diderik Van der Waals
 * Max Volmer
 * Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta
 * Emil Gabriel Warburg
 * John James Waterston
 * Richard Watson
 * James Watt
 * Eugene Paul Wigner
 * Ludwig Ferdinand Wilhelmy
 * William Hyde Wollaston