From the Molecular World

摘要

Early in 1882, the chemist and historian Hermann Kopp sent his distinguished chemist friend, Robert Bunsen, a whimsical birthday present: a speculative fantasy that he had fashioned some six years earlier on what the micro-world of atoms and molecules might be like. It was a spin-off of a much more ambitious but never-completed project to analyze the previous quarter-century's developments in chemical theory. He also sent copies to a small number of prominent chemists, all friends of his. The fantasy was published anonymously later in the year (possibly at the instigation of Kekule) under the title, Aus der Molecular-Welt. There followed a second and, four years later, third printing (1886), in which both the author and the dedicatee were finally named.