In the revolution which has within the last twenty years transformed chemistry from an empirical science based upon material conceptions to a mathematical science based upon energetic conceptions, Ostwald has been a leader. Qualitative and quantitative analysis which had been hardly more systematic and rational than a kitchen recipe book became in his hands a new and delightful study in which even the beginner could use his mind as well as his fingers. Professors of chemistry who had got along happily all their lives with a knowledge of arithmetic as far as and including percentage suddenly found themselves in need of calculus and other things of that sort. Yale graduates who went to the Leipzig laboratory in the nineties to continue their chemistry were set to study the works of Willard Gibbs, whose name they may indeed have seen in the catalogue of their alma mater, but whose acquaintance they were not likely to have made. What was worse, they had to get up their Gibbs in German,[9] since the original papers in the "Transactions of the Connecticut Academy" were not available, and even in English Gibbs is not light reading. It was Ostwald who first recognized Gibbs as "the greatest scientific genius that the United States has so far produced", and made his work known to Europe, where it has served as the guide and inspiration of some of the most fruitful investigations of the last two decades.
This is eminently characteristic of Ostwald. His own researches, great as they are, may without injustice be regarded as of less importance than the unique service he has rendered to his science by the discovery and prompt utilization of original theories and generalizations, whether found in the forgotten files of the journals and transactions, in the papers of his contemporaries or the work of his students. This was a task requiring both genius and generosity. What he did for Gibbs, the American, he did for van't Hoff, the Dutchman, and Arrhenius, the Swede, and many others, living and dead. He has always taken a keen interest in individuals. He is not content with the mere name of a great authority in a footnote. He wants to know what manner of man he was and in what words he first made public his discovery. This led him to cultivate the neglected field of chemical history and biography. Most chemists knew nothing at first hand of the work of the men they glibly referred to in their lectures, Avogadro, Bunsen, Dalton, Berzelius, etc. Nor could they have easily become acquainted with them if they had cared to, for the original papers were often inaccessible. So Ostwald started in 1889 his series of "The Classics of the Exact Sciences", reprinting important papers with notes.
In 1887, when few people knew that there was such a thing as physical chemistry, he founded a journal for it, the Zeitschrift für physikalische Chemie, now in its eighty-first volume, and not room enough yet in its two thousand three hundred pages a year to record the progress of the science. In 1902, when most scientists scoffed at the idea of philosophy, he started another venture equally bold, the Annalen der Naturphilosophie. During this period of sixteen years his literary output, not counting the two periodicals and the eighteen volumes of the "Classics of the Exact Sciences", already mentioned, included twenty-two books of 15,850 pages altogether; 120 papers making original contributions to chemical science comprising 1630 pages; addresses and dissertations amounting to 300 pages; and some 3880 abstracts and 920 book reviews in his journals. Every chemical library has upon its shelves (the plural is usually necessary) "the big Ostwald," the "Lehrbuch der allgemeinen Chemie", the size of a cyclopedia, with the dates of its volumes strung along through the eighties and nineties, though "the little Ostwald", the "Grundriss der allgemeinen Chemie", shows more wear on the binding. And all that, it must be remembered, represents only one side of the activity of this extraordinary man, for during the period of this enormous literary production he was professor of chemistry at the University of Leipzig and director of one of the busiest research laboratories in the world.
We find in our American universities nowadays many men who are so absorbed in their investigations that they refuse to consider either the philosophical or the practical aspects of their science, and they resent as an insult any demands made upon their time by the outside world. Ostwald has never been so busy as that. Notwithstanding the fact that he has carried on researches in pure science which have obtained for him the Nobel prize, he has not disdained to print letters to painters on the use of pigments and to lecture to housewives on the chemistry of cooking, as well as to bring his knowledge of science to bear upon the educational, social, and religious questions discussed in the periodicals of the day.
When we inquire why no American chemist has yet been honored by a Nobel medal, we are apt to be told that laboratory facilities in this country are too inadequate. Ostwald has never been hindered by this obstacle; not in Riga, where he was his own mechanic and glass blower, equipping the laboratory with home-made burettes, induction coils, and galvanometers; not in Leipzig, where he worked under conditions that have been described as follows:[10]
"The Leipzig laboratory, in which he worked until 1897, was situated in the Landwirtschaftliche Institut, an old pile originally devoted to agricultural chemistry, and in every way unfitted for the carrying on of those delicate experiments which brought Ostwald to the forefront of scientific workers. Research was carried on under countless difficulties; the light was bad, the rooms unventilated, the heating effected by means of stoves difficult to regulate and producing dust which caused much injury to the finer instruments; no precautions had been taken in laying the foundations to insure the deadening of vibrations; thus many experiments were ruined; the lack of space precluded the use of telescopes for reading scales, and altogether it would have been difficult to construct a laboratory worse adapted for physico-chemical investigations."
In one respect, it must be said, the current of scientific thought has gone quite counter to Ostwald's views. The atomic theory, which he was desirous of doing away with, has become substantiated and extended. The kinetic theory of gases has not been displaced by his concept of "volume-energy", and now the motion of the molecules has been made visible by the ultra-microscope, and we hear talk of the "atomic theory of electricity", the "corpuscular conception of light", and the "granular nature of energy." Even time and space show a tendency to disintegrate and become discrete. But the tide may turn at any moment, and Ostwald's conceptions once more become fashionable in scientific circles.
As I say, Ostwald does not appear to be a busy man. Would a busy man take the heart out of a fair summer day to devote himself to the entertainment of a wandering American journalist? If I had not known that he was an editor of two periodicals and a leader in some of the most important movements of the day, I might have supposed him a mere gentleman of leisure, as he sat with me on the porch of his country home, willing to talk freely on any topic I suggested, willing even to listen when I wanted to talk, with never a longing look through his study door at the heavily laden desk and silent typewriter. A big man, as well as a great man, is Ostwald; genial in manner, direct of speech. His bushy blond beard has mostly lost the color it had when first I saw him in 1904 at the St. Louis Congress of Arts and Sciences, and his hair is quite white and now cut short, bristling an inch or two all over his head. He would be recognized as a German professor by his look and bearing, if he were seen anywhere on the globe, yet he could not be called a type specimen, for he is free from the vices to which the average German professor is most addicted, the love of beer, tobacco, and Latin. Also, he hates dueling, although recognizing that it is not so dangerous as American football.[11]
But unconventional as his views may appear, it must not be thought that Ostwald is a faddist. His is a reasoned radicalism, originating not in mere neophilism or iconoclasm, but in the application of scientific principles to the problems of daily life. What distinguishes Ostwald from most other philosophers is his willingness to put his principles to the test of experience by striving to live up to them.
Our conversation was in English necessarily, for though I had taken my first German lessons from Ostwald over twenty years before—using his "Lehrbuch der allgemeinen Chemie" as a primer, instead of Grimm's "Märchen"—he had not been at hand to teach me to speak it. Ostwald, however, speaks English as readily as he does German—or French or Ido. His biographer relates that, when he was learning English in the Riga Gymnasium he had great difficulty in pronouncing "the", until he discovered that he could get the sound by filling his mouth with Zwieback; on the same principle, I suppose, as Demosthenes used pebbles. Now, however, he manages his th's perfectly, and I don't think he had Zwieback in his mouth when he talked with me.