GENERAL INTRODUCTION
American Chemical Society Series of
Scientific and Technologic Monographs
By arrangement with the Interallied Conference of Pure and Applied Chemistry, which met in London and Brussels in July, 1919, the American Chemical Society was to undertake the production and publication of Scientific and Technologic monographs on chemical subjects. At the same time it was agreed that the National Research Council, in cooperation with the American Chemical Society and the American Physical Society, should undertake the production and publication of Critical Tables of Chemical and Physical Constants. The American Chemical Society and the National Research Council mutually agreed to care for these two fields of chemical development. The American Chemical Society named as Trustees, to make the necessary arrangements for the publication of the monographs, Charles L. Parsons, secretary of the society, Washington, D. C.; the late John E. Teeple, then treasurer of the society, New York; and Professor Gellert Alleman of Swarthmore College. The Trustees arranged for the publication of the A. C. S. series of (a) Scientific and (b) Technologic Monographs by the Chemical Catalog Company, Inc. (Reinhold Publishing Corporation, successors) of New York,
The Council, acting through the Committee on National Policy of the American Chemical Society, appointed editors (the present list of whom appears at the close of this introduction) to have charge of securing authors, and of considering critically the manuscripts submitted. The editors endeavor to select topics of current interest, and authors recognized as authorities in respective fields.
The development of knowledge in all branches of science, especially in chemistry, has been so rapid during the last fifty years, and the fields covered by this development so varied that it is difficult for any individual to keep in touch with progress in branches of science outside his own specialty. In spite of the facilities for the examination of the literature given by Chemical Abstracts and by such compendia as Beilstein's Handbuch der Organischen Chemie, Richter's Lexikon, Ostwald's Lehrbuch der Allgemeinen Chemie, Abegg's and Gmelin-Kraut's Handbuch der Anorganischen Chemie, Moissan's Traité de Chimie Minérale Générale, Friend's and Mellor's Textbooks Inorganic Chemistry and Heilbron's Dictionary of Organic Compounds, it often takes a great deal of time to coordinate the knowledge on a given topic. Consequently when men who have spent years in the study of important subjects are willing
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