J. R. Partington

“Partington (1913) review of A Text-Book of Thermodynamic with photograph of Partington @wordpress.com.”

“A Text-book of Inorganic Chemistry for University Students (1921)”

“A Text-book of Thermodynamics (1913)”

“Higher Mathematics for Chemical Students (1911)”

“Just as his four-volume History is an indispensable aid to our discipline, his chemistry papers, his Higher Mathematics for Chemical Students, his Thermodynamics, his Specific Heats of Gases, and his huge Advanced Physical Chemistry remain monuments to the development of physical chemistry since the 1900s.”

“In 1919 he was appointed sole Professor of Chemistry at the East London College (renamed Queen Mary College in 1934). ...Partington chose to lecture exclusively on inorganic and physical chemistry. A compulsory one-term course on the history of chemistry that he introduced in 1919 was soon abandoned, though he revived it as an elective from 1945 onwards.”

“While still a graduate student, he published his first textbook, Higher Mathematics for Chemical Students.”

“One of the most brilliant students we have had during the last thirty years.”

“The Chinese early learned to work in metals; bronze occurs in the 11th-10th centuries B.C., useful iron from about 500 B.C. At a later period they made brass... True porcelain was first made about A.D. 600. They were probably in possession of mercury at an early date, and learnt how to decompose cinnabar into mercury and sulphur, and recompose it from these materials.”

“The Alexandrian chemists were very near to a recognition of gases.”

“The Greek chemical treatises contain... a great amount of practical chemical information... fusion, calcination, solution, filtration, crystallization, sublimation and especially distillation; and methods of heating include the open fire, lamps, and the sand and water baths. Nearly all this practical knowledge... the Arabs... derived... from the very source we are now considering.”

“We find Theophrastus (315 B.C.) describing... the manufacture of white lead... "lead is placed in an earthen vessel over sharp vinegar, and after it has acquired some thickness of a kind of rust... they open the vessels and scrape it off. ...repeating over and over again... til it is wholly gone. What has been scraped off they then beat to a powder and boil with water for a long time, and what at last settles to the bottom is white lead.”

“A great number of our common ideas and ways of looking at the world were really shaped for us by the Greeks of antiquity, and... incorporated into the scientific knowledge of today. Such ideas as those of matter, force, element, number, space, time, etc., came to us from the ancient Greeks.”

“The blue dye indigo was obtained from the indigo plant by the Egyptians more than 4000 years ago. ...The famous and valuable "purple of Tyre" was perhaps first made in Crete in very early times... obtained at great cost... from tiny marine molluscs. ...The scarlet dye mentioned in the Bible was obtained from the kermes insect (hence the name "crimson").”

“Side by side with the production of metals, the Egyptians and the inhabitants of Mesopotamia perfected the arts of making glazed pottery... and the production of glass. ...vessels were baked in tall closed furnaces. "Egyptian blue" was made in Egypt by heating silica with malachite and lime... applied with soda as a blue glaze on faience, and the blue glass is also colored with copper. Some early... Egyptian and Babylonian blue glass are coloured with cobalt.”

“The earliest applications of chemical processes were concerned with the extraction and working of metals and the manufacture of pottery. ...The irruption of an iron using race or races into Mediterranean sites ...introduced the Iron Age... but many of the oldest arts still survived in almost their original form. The potter, for example, still used nearly the same materials and appliances as Neolithic man.”

“In early physical systems we have optics dealing with phenomena perceived by the eye; acoustics treating of auditory percepts, and so on. The subjective concepts of "tone" and "colour" have now been replaced by the objectified concepts of frequency of vibration; and wave-length. The object of this process of elimination is, according to Planck, the striving towards a unification of the whole theoretical system, so that it shall be equally significant for all intelligent beings.”

“It is clear, however, that the distinguishing mark of the whole development of theoretical chemistry and physics is the elimination of the anthropomorphic elements, especially specific sense-impressions, from the concepts. This process is called by Prof. M. Planck the objectification of the physical system.”

“The fundamental materials from which we construct our picture of the universe may appear in different shapes, but there is really very little discontinuity between what seem at first sight very different views.”

“We perceive clearly that theories and hypotheses are not accepted or rejected outright; they have their periods of activity, and then lie dormant for a time, only to be revived in a new form later on.”