Abstract
IN our first number we had to record the death of Thomas Graham, one of the greatest chemists of the century, and formerly an occupant of the chair of chemistry in Anderson's Institution, Glasgow. We have now to announce the death of Frederick Penny, who, with the exception of the short interval between 1837 and 1839, when Gregory was its occupant, has filled it with increasing reputation and success ever since Graham vacated it to go to London, thirty-two years ago. Born in London in 1817, he was devoted to chemistry from his earliest years, and studied in the Apothecaries' Hall under Henry Hennell, F.R.S. It was while here that he was led to inquire into the combining weights of certain of the elements, by finding that the amount of potassic chloride obtained by acting upon pure potassic nitrate with excess of hydrochloric acid did not correspond with the quantity which theory showed should be obtained. Having made sure that the difference was not due to errors in his experiments, he ascribed it to inaccurate equivalents assigned to the elements. As the result of his investigations, he showed that the equivalents current at the time for chlorine, nitrogen, potassium, sodium, and silver were not in strict accordance with experiment, and that the “hypothesis of all equivalents being simple multiples of hydrogen is no longer tenable”. [Phil. Trans. 1839. Part i. p. 32.] There can be. no question as to the clearness of this paper and the. value of the results obtained, and our interest in them is in no way diminished when we find that the equivalents determined by Penny agree in a very remarkable manner with the mean numbers published by Stas, and that this agreement has been pointed out by that chemist. [Fresenius, Zeits. für Annal. Chem. 1868, pp. 164, 168. Compare Penny's Table, Phil. Trans. 1839, i. p. 32, with Stas's Fres. Zeits. 1868, p. 170.]
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Dr. Penny, F.R.S.E. . Nature 1, 138 (1869). https://doi.org/10.1038/001138a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/001138a0