Automatic chemical analysis.

Ann. New York Acad. Scien., 82/2. - New York, Published by the Academy, 1960, 8°, pp.609-951, many illustrations, orig. wrappers. First Edition! This series of papers is the result of a conference on Automatic Chemical Analysis held by the New York Academy of Sciences on November 12,13 and 14, 1959. "The conference on automatic chemical analysis on which this monograph is based was held only a few days after the announcement of the award of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Jaroslav Heyrowsky. It was thirty-five years ago that this distinguished Czechoslovakian scientist, working with Shikata*), invented a machine to perform an analysis automatically. This machine recorded current-voltage curves automatically at a dropping mercury electrode, and would tell the analyst not only what substance was present, in terms of the half-wave potential, but also how much! Any learned analyst of that time would have explained that this was not only absurd but impossible. Analysis was just not done in this simple fashion, and the general idea of automatic analysis, aside from its impossibility, seemed slightly indecent." R.H. Muller With Contributions of Ralph H. Muller (Conference Chairman and Consulting Editior), E.H. Baum, O. Bodansky, R. Bryden, E.W. Catanzaro, H.N. Claudy, W.A. Crandall, A.E. Dean, R.L. Engle, Jr., A. Ferrari, J.R. Gerke, T.C. Grenfell, T.A. Haney, W. Hardwick, J. Isreeli, R. Jonnard, J.M. Kelly, G. Kessler, M. Linder, E.E. Logsdon, D.P. Lundgren, A. Macaulay, H.J. Maier, M.M. Marsh, D.J. McLaughlin, R.H. Muller. H.J. Noebels, J.F. Pagano, D.A. Patient, M. Pelavin, J.R. Prigmore, G. Reinhardt, F.M. Russo-Alesi, G.E. Schaiberger, K.F. Schunk, M.K. Schwartz, I.L. Shannon, R.T. Sheen, E.J. Serfass, C. Sherman, L.T. Skeggs Jr., I.E. Taylor, C. Vanderwende, L.E. Van Petten, C. Weller, G.D. Winter, and K.R. Woods. "Ralph Holcombe Muller (1900-1970) was born in Philadelphia on January 25, 1900. Hem was educated in the United States at the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University (Ph.D., 1925) and at Gottingen in Germany (1927). He rose to the rank of Full Professor at the New York University in a teaching career that began in 1924 and ended in 1951 when he joined the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory as a group leader and special consultant in instruments development. He was engaged in highly secret work at the MIT Radiation Laboratory throughout World War II. Dr. Muller formed his own scientific consulting business in Santa Fe in 1962. In semiretirement, Dr. Müller accepted a position as Visiting Professor at the Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge in 1967, and it was there that he died on February 2 among friends, colleagues, and students in an atmosphere that he had come to love. Beyond all of his factual accomplishments, Ralph Müller was a person of great vision and a possessor of remarkable human attributes. It is worth quoting the first sentence of the first Instrumentation column he wrote for Analytical Chemistry in January 1946: "Instrumentation is on the threshold of a new era, and the problems 'Of analytical chemistry afford one of its most fertile fields of application:' What an era it has turned out to be! And Ralph Müller, through his vision, insight, and wisdom, contributed at every step along the way." ARCS & SPARKS - Spring - Summer 1970 Issue, p.5 *)Heyrovský, J. and Shikata: Researches with the Dropping Mercury Cathode. Part II. The Polarograph. Rec. trav. chim. Pays-Bas 44, 496-498 (1925).…