ANDREWS, Thomas. "The Bakerian Lecture: On the Continuity of the Gaseous and Liquid States of Matter", being an extract from Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 159 pp. 575-590, 1869. Extract in fine condition, bound beautifully in leather and boards. $500

In this paper, Irish chemist Thomas Andrews (1813 – 1885) defined the concepts of critical temperature and critical pressure, and was the first to note the phenomenon of critical opalescence.

“Andrews is best known for his studies on the continuity of the gaseous and liquid states, and in particular for his discovery of the critical temperature of carbon dioxide in 1861. His researches formed the subject of the Bakerian lectures for 1869 and 1876; a further paper was published posthumously in 1887. The first printed account of his work appeared as a result of a communication from Andrews to W. A. Miller, who published it in his textbook(1863). After a graphic description of the appearance of carbon dioxide in a state intermediate between gas and liquid, he concludes “that there exists for every liquid a temperature at which no amount of pressure is sufficient to retain it in the liquid form” (in W. A. Miller, Elements of Chemistry, 3rd ed. [London, 1863], I, 328–329). He expressed the full implications of his discovery some ten years after his first experiments when, in 1871, he wrote: “We may yet live to see, or at least we may feel with some confidence that those who come after us will see, such bodies as oxygen and hydrogen in the liquid, perhaps even in the solid state” (Scientific Papers, p. Ix). “--Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography, online.