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.

The Commission for the Study of the Natural Productive Forces of Russia (“KEPS”), which arose during the European war and has successfully continued to develop an ever broader and more vigorous activity, has included among its other undertakings a group of research institutes, among the first of which to arise were the Institutes of Physico-Chemical Analysis and of Platinum. In organizing these Institutes, the Commission proceeded from the indisputable proposition that a comprehensive study of the natural riches of our country cannot be carried out by excursions and expeditions alone; that, for the elaboration of the material obtained, laboratory or cabinet investigations are always necessary, and that, for the success of the work, these must be placed on a sufficiently firm footing. The above-named Institutes are institutions that make possible such investigations, supplementing direct acquaintance with natural resources in the field.

The Proceedings of the Institute of Physico-Chemical Analysis before me are the printed organ of the Institute, in which an extensive group of such investigations is being carried out—investigations of the greatest importance for the detailed study of Russia’s mineral riches and for clarifying the paths leading to their rational use.

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 fact, however, such an arrangement 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 matter, which has yielded a great many valuable results of a purely scientific character, is at the same time an indispensable instrument for the study of a whole series of practical questions 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, the large-scale chemical industry, and so forth. In all those cases where the utilization of such natural resources is involved—such as ore deposits, salt deposits or salt lakes; when the question is the production of pure metals and their alloys, the separation from one another of various salts occurring together in nature, etc.—modern technology constantly makes use of the methods of physico-chemical analysis. In this respect it is a very favorable circumstance that at the head of the Institute that concerns us stands the well-known scholar, Academician N. S. Kurnakov, who has created in Russia an entire extensive scientific school working precisely in the direction just indicated and who has enriched science with a number of new

or of methods of physico-chemical analysis that were previously little known and little developed.

The introductory article by Academician Kurnakov, with which the first issue of Izvestiya opens, contains general indications concerning the tasks that the Institute sets for itself. In particular, it emphasizes the significance of two important and major fields in which physico-chemical analysis may be widely applied to the solution of problems of a purely practical character: first, the field of metallic alloys, so important in modern technology, one of the first steps in the scientific treatment of which is associated with the name of the famous Russian scientist D. K. Chernov; and, second, the field of equilibria occurring in salt solutions—a field especially important for establishing the rational extraction and purification of the salts contained in the brine of our salt lakes and other natural brines, especially the salts of potassium and magnesium, along with 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—carnallite, 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 elucidation of higher problems of pure science and at the same time serve to solve practical problems posed by industry. Along with experimental data, the article contains an 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,” the original of which was published in a French journal 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 country and to the increase of its prosperity.

L. Chugaev.