Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 2.djvu/653

 clxxxvi. 657 (1896); cxo. 129 (1897); cxci. 124 (1898).

The work on the gas battery was interrupted by investigations of more urgent importance. Mond from 1886 directed his efforts to recover the chlorine wasted in the ammonia-soda process as calcium chloride. By using first nickel oxide, and later magnesia, instead of lime to decompose the ammonium chloride formed, he obtained easily decomposable chlorides, from which chlorine could be recovered by treatment with air or steam, either in the elementary form or in that of hydrochloric acid. Between 1886 and 1889 he took out a number of patents bearing on this point, some independently, some with G. Eschellmann, and his processes were used industrially for some time. The use of nickel compounds, and of nickel valves in the chlorine process, and the use of finely divided nickel to purify producer-gas for use in the gas battery led Mond, in collaboration with Langer and Quincke, to discover nickel carbonyl, a gaseous compound of nickel and carbon monoxide. Mond, after two years' work, based on this discovery a remarkable method for the extraction of metallic nickel from its ores, unlike any metallurgical process previously known (see paper 'On the extraction of nickel from its ores by the Mond process,' by, F.R.S., Proc. Inst. Civil Engineers, cxxxv. 29, 1899). Mond formed the 'Mond Nickel Company' to work the process, with mines in Canada and a model works at Clydach, near Swansea, with a considerable output of nickel yearly. Mond pursued the scientific investigation of the carbonyls, and with Quincke and Langer obtained iron carbonyls; he suggested to Sir James Dewar an investigation on the production of nickel carbonyl under high pressure, for which Dewar took out a patent in 1902; and a posthumous paper, with a note by Mr. R. L. Mond, gives an account of investigations with Dr. Heinrich Hirtz and Mr. M. Dalton Cowap on carbonyls of cobalt, molybdenum, and ruthenium (Trans, Chem. Soc. 1910, p. 798). This was Mond's last research.

In the work of scientific societies Mond was extremely active. In January 1880 he took a leading part in the foundation of a Lancashire Chemical Society, and in the following April urged that it should become a national society ; as a result of the movement, which was largely helped by Sir Henry Roscoe, the Society of Chemical Industry was founded in 1881, and became later one of the largest scientific societies in the world. In August 1881 Mond undertook tho arrangements for the foundation of the Society's 'Journal,' drew up a plan for it, and guaranteed the cost till it should become self-supporting. He acted as foreign secretary of the society as president in 1888. In 1906 he was awarded the society's medal for conspicuous services to applied chemistry.

Mond was elected F.R.S. in 1891, honorary member of the German Chemical Society and member of the Società Reale of Naples in 1908, and corresponding member of the Prussian Akademie der Wissenschaften in 1909. He received honorary doctorates from the universities of Padua (1892), Heidelberg (1896), Manchester (1904), and Oxford (1907). He was awarded the grand cordon of the Crown of Italy in 1909.

Mond lived at Winnington from 1867 till 1884, when he removed to London; he spent most of his winters in Rome, when he acquired the Palazzo Zuccari. For years he had suffered from heart disease, from which he died at his house. The Poplars, Avenue Road, Regent's Park, on 11 Dec. 1909. He was buried with Jewish rites in a family mausoleum at the St. Pancras cemetery, Finchley.

Mond married in 1866 his cousin Frida Loewenthal, who survives him. He left two sons, Robert Ludwig Mond, and Sir Alfred Moritz Mond, liberal M.P. for Swansea, who was created a baronet in 1910.

Mond was a man of great scientific attainments, of indomitable resource and energy, and with a genius for divining the industrial possibilities of discoveries in pure science. Apart from inventions of detail, he will be remembered, as an industrial chemist, for having placed the soda process on a practical basis, for his nitrogen recovery process and producer gas, and for his nickel process. He left a fortune of over 1,000,000l. But his commercial success was 'the result and not the object of his work.'

The obituary of Mond by Carl Langer (Berichte der deutschen chem. Gesellschaft for 1911, p. 3665) gives a list of his English patents, forty-nine in number, and a list (incomplete) of the papers published by Mond whether independently, with the collaborators previously mentioned, or with R. Nasini (on the physical properties of certain nickel compounds).

Apart from his daily occupations Mond's interests were mainly in pure science, music, and art, and the improvement of