< Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 82.djvu
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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

In accepting the office of President of the Ninth International Congress of Applied Chemistry, Professor Walden made the following remarks:

The choice which has just fallen upon me is a distinction of an altogether exceptional kind, and also a task of an exceptional kind. On behalf of Professor Konovaloff, who is absent, and who will assuredly regret his inability to take part in our common celebration, I can only express to you his thanks and his undoubted acceptance. In my own case, however, I realize mixed emotions. I say to myself: "Much honor, much work; many disappointments, many gray hairs!" In accepting this choice, we are fully aware that our powers will prove insufficient to do full justice to the duties entailed, but we see therein an honor rendered to our fatherland and to the great men, the great chemists of our country. I need only recall to your minds a few names; that of Lemonossoff, who one hundred and sixty years ago laid the foundation of modern chemistry; that of Grotthus, a Russian chemist of a century ago; that of Hessen, also a chemist, and finally I name to you our great fellow-countryman, recently deceased, Mendeleef, the creator of the periodic system of the elements. I assume that the honor you have just accorded to our fatherland is also addressed to these great men. We are the inheritors of the deeds these men accomplished. It is not the mind alone that rules congresses, the heart also must have its say. Of the scope of my mind, I am, naturally, not qualified to speak, but in what concerns my heart, in what concerns my ardent wish to do my best, to give you the best possible reception, as to this I believe I can safely speak, as to this I shall willingly and gladly compete with the gentlemen who have received us in former congresses, and if three years hence, in transmitting my office into other hands, I may perhaps be able to speak in my turn with the sunny humor of our president of to-day, then I shall be content. I thank you.

As the leader, director and presiding officer of the Ninth Congress of Applied Chemistry, Professor Walden possesses many notable qualities which must aid in rendering that congress a success. With its complex composition, made up as it is of as many, or perhaps more countries than there are known chemical elements, we might say that no one was better qualified than Professor Walden, with his intimate knowledge of the art of combining and ordering the various chemical elements, and we have no doubt that he will be equally successful with the various and eminently individual human equations in the congress, and that they will be so welded as to constitute a thoroughly homogeneous assembly, which will be brought to a close in a manner satisfactory to all, after the members shall have given free and full expression to their views.

The eighth congress had to decide whether four or but three official languages should be recognized, and the action finally taken favored the recognition of four—English, French, German and Italian. At the ninth congress many interesting matters will have to be discussed and determined; one of the most important contemplates the securing of an agreement among scientists to accept a standard determination of atomic weights by successive congresses, the weights recognized as au-

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