Page:Russian Realities and Problems - ed. James Duff (1917).djvu/196

 Chemistry was even more fortunate: conceived in a quite modern way by one of the earliest Russian men of science, it was subsequently studied with great success in different Russian schools.

Some years before the foundation of the University of Moscow, Lomonosov expressed original views on this subject: as a believer in the "corpuscular philosophy," he tried to apply quantitative analysis in studying the physical properties of bodies: he thought it necessary to ascertain their measure, weight and proportions; he was "the father of physical chemistry"; in his inquiries he implied the principles of conservation of matter and of motion; he established fairly clearly some other propositions of this new science, concerning not only the mechanical theory of heat, but also the kinetic theory of gases, the continuity of the three states of matter, etc. And thus Lomonosov formulated the conception of a new science—physical chemistry, which has grown up only in our own days: "physical chemistry," he wrote in 1752, "is a science, explaining theoretically and empirically, by means of physical experiments, the causes of the chemical processes which go on in compound bodies ."