Evening star., 1916-08-01
Recognizes Scope Of
His Discoveries.

possibilities they brought up for indus
trial achievement and the betterment
of the lot Of humanity were none the
less real for being very remote. He was
one OF the men to take the first steps
on a path that may yet lead to un-
imagined heights.
This work OF Sir Williams on the
ultimate nature of matter, this prob
ing into the fundamental qualities of
all existence. belongs peculiarly to the
science of the twentieth century,
which abandons the old idea that
science is concerned only with things
that can be weighed and measured,
and plunges boldly with It's methods
of exactitude into the realm formerly
losophy. The other achievement for
which Sir William Is world-famous,
however, belongs rather to the old
school of discovery-probabl 1t will
be the last of its kind that the last
century was rich in.
Sir William Ramsay may be called the
first man to know the truth about the
air We breathe Ever since the dawn of
time humanity has lived in this IA
millar atmosphere. for the last cen
tury and more the air has been the
object Of the keenest expert study
1t was lfquefcd, anaiyzed, the laws of
its expansion determined. the proper
tions Of it's constituents calculated to
the third decimal place. Then, in the
year 1896, came Sir William Ramsay
and his colleague. Lord Rayleigh, and
announced the discovery of new gas
in the atm osphere-a gas present In
the proportion of one part in every
hundred In all the air in which we
live and move and have our being
The new gas they named argon, the
inert. because II refused to combine
with any other element. unlike oxygen
and nitrogen. the two most abundan.
gases of the air. which are chemically
active. There was considerahl In
credulity on The part Of scientific men
at the announcement OF the presence
Of the new gas in the air, but further
experiment has established its pres
ence beyond all doubt ArSon is one
of the most curious of all the elements
in the way II refuses to combine with
any other substance.
Not content with the discovery of
argon, Sir William pursued his inyes-
LEGATIONS farther. and ultimately dis
covered four other hitherto unknown
gaseous elements in the air These
four are much less abundant than ar
gon. however. which is thus the most
important of the fve Their discovery
and isolation were attended by i'm
mense difficulty, because like argon.
they refuse to com bine with other sub
stances and can only be removed from
the air by liquefying 1t. and separating
the resulting liquid into rs clements.
The lighter of the four new gases
named helium. neon. krypton and
xenon-refused 10
LIGHTER of Gases NGuefy even Mt
the lowest tenn
Fail to Liquefy. peratures which
had up to that time been obtained. By
using liquid hydrogen as cooling
agent Sir William and his colleagues
succeeded in setting q now low tenn
perature mark and liquefytng all the
ive gases. Hs related how, when the
unbel.evably cold liquid hydrogen was
drawn from Its bulb. tho air OF the
room actually frozs on its surface-not
tho moisture in the air. but the air
itself-and formed a white solid snow
ball of solid air. that melted and drip
ped to the floor.
The Importance of the discovery of
these new gases. aside from the inter
est that attaches to knowing the con-
stituents of the air we breathe, can
only adequately be appreciated by men
of science. The newcomers filled awk-
ward gaps in tho table of the ele-
ments which science has prepared in
one OF her attempts to reduce tho phe-
nomena of chemistry to ono logical
law.
And the man who did all this. whom