FORCHHAMMER, G. - A PIONEER-WORK IN OCEANOGRAPHY.

On the Composition of Sea-Water in the different parts of the Ocean. Received July 28, - Read November 17, 1864.

(London, Taylor & Francis, 1865) Large 4to. Without wrappers. Extracted from "Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London.", 1865, Vol. 155. Pp. 203-262. Clean and fine.

First printing of Forchhammer's - the father of Danish geology - pioneer-work in oceanography and hydrography, as it is the first scientific investigation in this field of research. This large paper grew out of the Danish publication "Om Søvandets Bestanddele og deres Fordeling i Havet." (1859), but is much enlarged, augmented with new facts acquired by many new samples of sea-water from all ower the world. "It contains a determination as complete as possible of the distribution of the saline substances at the surfaces of the different parts of the sea, and in different depths at the same place."(Forchhammer).

"Forchhammer's fundamental researches on the composition of seawater brought him international acclaim. He began this work in 1843, more as a geologist than as a chemist, to explain the phenomena that give rise to the deposits on the sea floor...He carried out analyses of over 160 samples collected for him over a twenty-year period by the Danish and British navies. He measures chlorine, sulfur, magnesium, calcium, and potassium gravimetrically with 100-pound samples, obtaining sodium from the differences....Forchhammer also posed in an elegant form the "geochemical balance problem" arising from the major sedimentary cycle: "Thus the quantity of the different elements in seawater is not proportional to the quantity of the elements which the river waters put into the sea, but inversely proportional to the facility with which the elements are made insoluble by general or organo-chemical action in the sea"" (DSB V: p. 72).

The work was translated into English as "On the Components of Sea Water" (1865) in Phil. Transactions.

Order-nr.: 42430