1923 | Science
Science
Chemist Peter Debye and his colleague Erich Hückel extend the 1887 theory of Svante Arrhenius with a new theory of the thermodynamic properties of electrolytes (see Deybe, 1916). They prove that metallic salts disassociate in solution into ions (charged atoms) and the ionization is complete rather than partial; their Debye-Hückel equation takes into account the interactions between the various ions and shows why the disassociation does not always appear to be complete. Debye also describes what will be called the Compton effect, discovered last year by U.S. physicist Arthur H. Compton and discovered independently this year by Debye (see 1925).
Marshfield, Mo.-born astronomer Edwin (Powell) Hubble, 33, at the 19-year-old Mount Wilson Observatory in California finds in October that the blurry masses in the Milky Way, heretofore considered gaseous bodies, are actually stars—a galaxy in the spiral arm of the Andromeda nebula. The universe is at least 100 times larger than was thought, Hubble concludes (see 1929).
Chemist-physicist Edward W. Morley dies at West Hartford, Conn., February 24 at age 85; Sir James Dewar at London March 27 at age 80, having helped to develop the explosive cordite in addition to inventing the double-walled vacuum flask that bears his name.