FROM THE HISTORY OF PHYSICS

FROM THE HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY OF THE PHENOMENON OF ELECTROOSMOSIS

E. A. Shneiberg

It is far from generally known that the phenomenon of electroosmosis, which has found wide application in modern technology, was first discovered in Moscow in 1807 by F. F. Reuss, a professor at Moscow University.

In view of the fact that Prof. Reuss’s work has not yet been covered in our literature, although his works are of not only historical and technical but also practical interest, we shall briefly consider his works and the circumstances of the discovery of the phenomenon of electroosmosis.

Fedor Fedorovich Reuss (1778–1852) from 1804 held the chair of chemistry at Moscow University, initially with the rank of extraordinary professor.

In 1808 Reuss was confirmed in the rank of ordinary professor, and in 1830—as honored professor; in addition, Reuss was awarded the title of academician and honorary member of the Medical-Surgical Academy. Many learned societies in Russia and abroad elected Reuss among their members. From 1804 F. F. Reuss was permanent secretary, and from 1822 president, of the Physico-Medical Society at Moscow University.

With Reuss’s participation the first chemical laboratory for the university’s Faculty of Physics and Mathematics was created¹. For 22 years Reuss headed the chair of chemistry and pharmacography in the Moscow branch of the Medical-Surgical Academy.

At Moscow University F. F. Reuss worked for 28 years—until 1832, when he was retired with a full pension.

The scientific activity of F. F. Reuss was multifaceted: in addition to lecturing at the university and at the Medical-Surgical Academy, he carried out numerous scientific investigations on various questions of chemistry, physics, and medicine. Without entering into

before considering all of Reiss’s works, we shall dwell briefly on his works in electrochemistry.

Reiss’s attention was drawn by the recently discovered source of electric current—the voltaic pile, and he was one of the first scholars to take up the study of the phenomena of the passage of electric current through liquids.

F. F. Reiss reported on the results of his investigations at meetings of the Physico-Medical Society. It is not without interest to indicate the titles of the reports made by Reiss at meetings of the Society during 1806–1807: “New Experiments on the Alteration of Water by Galvanic Electricity” (November 1806); “Description of the Chemical Actions of Galvanic Electricity” (March 1807); “Description of an Experiment Proving the Formation of Gases by the Action of Galvanic Electricity from Water in the River Itself, Part of Which, over a Considerable Extent, Served as a Conductor for Connecting the Poles of the Voltaic Pile” (October 1807); “Notice of a New Action of Galvanic Electricity, Hitherto Unknown” (November 1807). Some of F. F. Reiss’s works were published in the Transactions issued by the Physico-Medical Society: “Commentationes Societatis Physico-Medicae...,” and also in the works of the Moscow Society of Naturalists: “Mémoires de la Société Impériale des Naturalistes de Moscou.”

In 1809, in the Transactions of the Moscow Society of Naturalists², F. F. Reiss’s work “On a New Action of Galvanic Electricity” was published, in which he describes in detail the experiments that led him to the discovery of a new phenomenon, hitherto unknown, which subsequently received the name electro-osmosis.

At the beginning of the article Reiss notes that he had made the first communication on this new action of electricity, discovered by him, at a meeting of the Physico-Medical Society as early as the autumn of 1807² (p. 327).

Further Reiss indicates that he established that “...the action of a source of electricity with respect to the decomposition of an inter-polar liquid always remains one and the same...” even at a considerable distance between the electrodes. He arrived at this conclusion on the basis of his experiments carried out on the Moskva River: the liberation of oxygen and hydrogen at the electrodes occurred with equal intensity both in the case when between the electrodes there was a layer of water two hundred paces across or a bed of moist earth “ten, twenty, or more arshins” thick, and in the case when the electrodes were lowered into a glass of water and were at a distance of 2.5 cm from one another² (pp. 328–329). Then F. F. Reiss proceeds to the description of two of his experiments, during which he observed the phenomena of electro-osmosis.

Reuss’s first experiment consisted of the following: into a crystal U-shaped tube about 1 cm in diameter and 18 cm long (Fig. 1) were sealed two small platinum wires, which were then connected to the poles of a voltaic pile consisting of 92 silver and zinc plates. The bend of the tube between these wires was filled with stone ground into powder, and then both parts of the tube—A and B—were filled with pure water.

Soon after the current circuit was closed, the water began to decompose, and oxygen and hydrogen began to be released near the platinum wires. In addition, an entirely new phenomenon, previously described by no one, was discovered: the water into which the platinum wire connected with the negative pole of the current source was immersed (in tube B) began to rise rapidly and, as early as 15–20 min after the start of the experiment, had risen by more than 25 mm above its former level; at the same time the water filling

Fig. 1.

Fig. 2.

tube A correspondingly fell. After 14 hours, tube B, as well as the entire small tube C, were filled with water, whereas almost none remained in tube A. “Thus,” wrote Reuss, “the entire quantity of water that had been in the positive arm of the tube was pushed out of the apparatus through the opening of the small tube of the negative arm”² (p. 332). When, on the fourth day after the beginning of the tests, the circuit was opened, the water in tube A began to rise (and in tube B, correspondingly, to fall) and after a few minutes settled in both tubes at one and the same level.

The second experiment consisted of the following: into a parallelepiped A of wet clay were inserted, at a distance of about 12 cm from each other, two glass cylinders B and C, each about 7 cm high and about 2.5 cm in diameter (Fig. 2). The cylinders were immersed in the clay to a depth of about 1.2 cm. Into each of the cylinders was poured a 7-mm layer of well-washed sand, and then a column of water 2.5 cm high was added. The cylinders were loosely

were plugged with stoppers, through which passed wires connected to the poles of a voltaic pile consisting of 72 silver and zinc plates.

Soon after the electric circuit was closed and the evolution of gases began near each of the electrodes, Reuss noticed an intense discharge of liquid clay through the layer of sand in cylinder \(C\) (with the positive electrode), and then the water level in cylinder \(B\) (with the negative electrode) began to rise.

Having finished the description of the experiments, Reuss draws the following conclusions:

“These two experiments, to which I shall not fail to add a number of others as soon as circumstances allow me to do so, in my opinion prove in a sufficiently decisive manner:

1) that the liquid situated between the poles of a source of electricity undergoes decomposition; under the influence of the poles, or of unlike electricities, it is continuously drawn in the direction from the positive pole to the negative (the spacing is ours.—Ya. Sh.);

2) that this displacement becomes visible as soon as some mechanical obstacle begins to counteract the liquid’s making the opposite motion under the action of its own weight;

3) that the force on which this displacement depends is great enough to overcome not only the resistance offered by the weight of the liquid, but also that which is created by an intermediate substance that is to some extent impermeable to the liquid;

4) that in this motion the liquid can be transported from one place to another situated at a considerable distance, and through porous but dense bodies (the spacing is ours.—Ya. Sh.).² (p. 337).

Thus, F. F. Reuss was the first to discover the phenomenon of the movement of a liquid through a porous partition under the action of an electric current.

The discovery by F. F. Reuss of the phenomenon of electrical osmosis was described in their works by the most prominent Russian physicists. Thus, for example, Professor of St. Petersburg University F. F. Petrushevsky, in his Course of Observational Physics (1872), wrote in the chapter “Electrical Phenomena in Liquids”: “Another kind of mechanical phenomenon appearing in a closed galvanic circuit is galvanic endosmosis... This phenomenon was discovered by the Moscow physician Reuss.”³ O. D. Khvolson, in his Course of Physics, noted that “In a closed circuit there is observed an interesting, purely mechanical phenomenon of the movement of liquids through porous partitions, and also through thin tubes, and moreover

almost always in the direction which we have taken to be the direction of the electric current itself. This phenomenon was discovered by Reiss (1807) in Moscow...”⁴.

Speaking of Reiss’s work in the field of electrochemistry, Prof. B. N. Menshutkin wrote: “In these original investigations of his, F. F. Reiss is in some respects a predecessor (emphasis ours.—Ya. Sh.) of M. Faraday and of the scientists who studied the interactions between substances in the colloidal state and the electric current. F. F. Reiss is credited with the discovery of the phenomenon which later received the name cataphoresis.”⁵.

Reiss’s discovery received high appraisal in an article included in the Biographical Dictionary of the Professors and Teachers of Moscow University, published in 1855. The article devoted to Reiss states: “Prof. Reiss, the first to observe the motion of water located between the poles of a voltaic pile, from one pole to the other, proved by many, extraordinarily ingenious experiments both the actual existence of this motion and the considerable force with which it occurs (Reiss called this force ‘water-driving.’—Ya. Sh.)... It is desirable for the benefit of science that these interesting experiments of Reiss with electricity, generally little known, especially to foreign scientists, be brought to general attention” (emphasis ours.—Ya. Sh.).⁶

The practical value of F. F. Reiss’s discovery was noted in 1901 by the well-known Russian electrical engineer V. A. Tyurin, who wrote in the journal Elektrichestvo: “Reiss discovered in 1807 in Moscow the so-called ‘electric endosmosis’... and since it is very possible—there are unquestionable indications of this—that ‘electric endosmosis’... will find application in technology (emphasis ours.—Ya. Sh.), all the more so because, together with the liquid, under certain conditions, various particles suspended (‘suspended’) in it are also transported, I should like here to recall the old and rather little-known works of Reiss.”⁷

V. A. Tyurin’s prediction was confirmed: electroosmosis has indeed found wide application in various fields of technology.

F. F. Reiss’s discovery is used by Soviet scientists in solving the newest problems of science and technology. One such problem, posed before the scientists of our country by the Great Construction Projects of Communism, was finding a method for the rapid drying of alluvial soils in the production of hydraulic-engineering works.

The solution to this problem was found in the application of electroosmosis for draining alluvial soils.

References Cited

1. V. V. Markovnikov, A Historical Essay on Chemistry at Moscow University, Lomonosov Collection, Materials for the History of the Development of Chemistry in Russia, Moscow, 1901, pp. 48–49.

2. Mémoires de la Société Impériale des Naturalistes de Moscou, Moscow, 1809, vol. II, pp. 327–337.

3. F. F. Petrushevsky, A Course in Observational Physics. St. Petersburg, 1872, vol. II, p. 251.

4. O. D. Khvolson, Course of Physics, 1923, vol. IV, p. 508.

5. B. N. Menshutkin, From the Past of Russian Chemistry. Moscow Chemists of the 1820s. Proceedings of the Institute of Physico-Chemical Analysis, Leningrad, 1928, issue 1, vol. IV, pp. 1–7.

6. Biographical Dictionary of Professors and Instructors of Moscow University, Moscow, 1855, part II, p. 337.

7. V. A. Tyurin, Reiss’s Researches, Elektrichestvo, 1901, No. 20, p. 281. Materials on the history of the work of Russians in the field of electrical engineering.