Proceedings of the Institute of Physico-Chemical Analysis edited by N. S. Kurnakov and B. N. Menshutkin
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Proceedings of the Institute of Physico-Chemical Analysis, edited by N. S. Kurnakov and B. N. Menshutkin. Vol. I, issue 1. Petrograd, 1919. Published by the Commission for the Study of the Natural Productive Forces of Russia under the Russian Academy of Sciences. 300 pp.
Having arisen during the European war and successfully continuing to develop an ever broader and more vigorous activity, the Commission for the Study of the Natural Productive Forces of Russia (“KEPS”), among its other undertakings, included within its structure a group of research institutes, among which the first to arise were the Institutes of Physico-Chemical Analysis and of Platinum. In organizing these Institutes, the Commission proceeded from the indisputable premise that a comprehensive study of the natural riches of our country cannot be carried out by excursions and expeditions alone; that, for the processing of the material obtained, laboratory or cabinet investigations are always necessary, and these, for the success of the matter, must be placed on a sufficiently firm footing. The above-named Institutes are precisely institutions that provide the possibility of such investigations, supplementing on-site acquaintance with natural riches.
The Proceedings of the Institute of Physico-Chemical Analysis lying before me are the printed organ of the Institute, in which an extensive group of such investigations is carried out—investigations of the utmost importance for the detailed study of Russia’s mineral wealth and for clarifying the paths leading to its rational utilization.
To the unprepared reader it may seem somewhat strange that the unifying element of the various investigations in this case is not the object of these investigations, but the method. In actual fact, however, such a construction is the most rational and economical in terms of the expenditure of labor and time.
The point is that the method of analysis—or, more precisely, the group of methods of analysis—based on the application of the purely physical properties of a substance, which has yielded a great many valuable results of a purely scientific character, is at the same time an invaluable instrument for studying a whole series of practical problems in which various branches of industry are most directly interested, such as metallurgy and the metal industry in the broad sense of the word, the salt industry, large-scale chemical industry, and so on. In all those cases where the matter concerns the use of such natural riches as ore deposits, salt deposits or salt lakes; when it is a question of obtaining pure metals and their alloys, of separating from one another various salts found together in nature, and so forth, modern technology constantly makes use of the methods of physico-chemical analysis. In this respect it is a very favorable circumstance that the Institute of interest to us has as its head the well-known scholar Academician N. S. Kurnakov, who has created in Russia an entire extensive scientific school working in precisely the direction just indicated and who has enriched science with a number of new
or of methods of physico-chemical analysis previously little known and little developed.
The introductory article by Academician Kurnakov, which opens the first issue of the Proceedings, contains general indications concerning the tasks set for itself by the Institute. In particular, emphasis is placed on the significance of two important and major fields in which the application of physico-chemical analysis to the solution of problems of a purely practical character may be widely manifested: first, the field of metallic alloys, so important in modern technology, one of the first steps in whose scientific treatment is associated with the name of the famous Russian scientist D. K. Chernov; and second, the field of equilibria occurring in salt solutions—an especially important field for establishing the rational extraction and purification of the salts contained in the brine of our salt lakes and other natural brines, especially salts of potassium and magnesium alongside common salt, Glauber’s salt, and so forth.
The second and third articles of the collection are devoted to the study of iron with aluminum (N. S. Kurnakov, G. G. Urazov, and A. T. Grigoriev) and of ternary systems: iron, phosphorus, carbon (N. S. Konstantinov), which are of particularly important technical significance. Then follows a series of articles by N. N. Efremov in which the physical properties (internal friction, fusibility) of binary systems formed by organic compounds are investigated. The last of the original articles in the collection (by N. S. Kurnakov and S. F. Zhemchuzhny) is devoted to the study of equilibrium in the system sodium chloride—magnesium sulfate, which is of enormous importance for the utilization of natural brines. This article is an excellent example of how the same methods of scientific work can contribute to the clarification of the higher problems of pure science and at the same time serve for the solution of practical problems put forward by industry. Alongside experimental data, the article contains the application to their analysis of a visual geometric method, close to that treated by the branch of geometry called topology.
The second section of issue 1 contains a translation of the classic memoir by the well-known French physical chemist Le Chatelier, “On Solutions,” whose original was published in a French journal that is difficult to obtain.
One cannot but welcome the first steps in the activity of the new Institute. They promise in the future to yield an equally abundant harvest both for pure science and for its practical applications to the study of our homeland and to the increase of its prosperity.
L. Chugaev.