VAN'T HOFF, J.H. - FOUNDING STEREOCHEMISTRY.

Die Lagerung der Atome in Raume. Nach des verfassers Broschüre "La chimie dans l'espace" deutsch bearbeitet von F. Herrmann. Nebst einem Vorwort von Johannes Wislicenus. Mit in dem text eingedruckten Holzstichen. (1877). (+) Die Lagerung der Atome in Raume. Zweite umgearbeitete und vermehrte Auflage. Mit einem Vorwort von Johannes Wislicenus. Mit 19 eingedruckten Holzstichen. (1894). (+) Stereochemie. Nach J.H. van't Hoff's "Dix Années dans L'Histoire d'une Théorie." Unter Mitwirkung des Verfassers neu Bearbeitet von W. Meyerhoffer. (1892).

Braunschweig, Vieweg und Sohn, 1877 u. 1894. Leipzig und Wien, Franz Deuticke, 1892. 8vo. Bound in one well-preserved contemp. hcloth with gilt lettering to spine. X,(2),53 pp. + XII,147 pp. + VIII,128 pp. Halftitle and titlepage to the first work with some brownspots in upper right corners. A few scattered brownspots and a few underlinings, otherwise internally fine and clean. From the library of Hans Rupe (with his exlibris on inside frontcover). Rupe became extraordinary professor for organic chemistry at the University of Basel. In 1912 , he was promoted to ordinary professor for organic chemistry.

First German edition (in the adaptation of Wislicenus) of van't Hoff's epoch making work "La chimie dans l'espace", published 1875 (a French expanded translation of his dissertation of 1874), and in which he established the fact that optically active substances contain at least one "asymmetric" carbon atom, that is, a carbon atom linked with four different kinds of atoms or radicals. Together here with the second, much expanded version and also WITH THE FIRST GERMAN EDITION OF OF "Dix Années...", which includes nearly three times as much material as the first edition ("La Chimie dans l'Espace").

"His revolutionary ideas on the theory of the asymmetric carbon atom did not attract the attention of chemists, however, until Wislicenus asked van’t Hoff’s permission for a German translation by one of his pupils, Felix Herrmann."(DSB).

"In 1874, at the age of twenty-two, and with his Ph.D., as yet a few months in the future, he published a startling paper on the structure of organic compounds. Chemists had been puzzling for more than half a centurt over the fact that some organic compounds were optically active while others were not. As long ago as Biot there had been suggestion that this was due to some sort of assymetry, but the nature and location of that asymmetry remained a mystery. Pasteur had located the asymmetry in crystals, but that did not help with respect to the optical activity of subsatnces in soolution.Van't Hoff suggested that the symmetry exisyted in the molecules themselves. He drew four valences of the carbon atom (each represented as a short line or "bond"), not two-dimensionally toward the four angles of a square, as Couper had done, but three-dimensionally toward the four angles of a tetrahedron. When the tetrahedral arrangement was considered, matters cleared up..." (Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia..).
Van't Hoff was the first to receive the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1901.

Parkinson "Breakthroughs", 1874 C.

Order-nr.: 49034