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Molecular Physics
An International Journal at the Interface Between Chemistry and Physics
Volume 113, 2015 - Issue 17-18: Special Issue in Honour of Jean-Pierre Hansen
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Invited Articles

The rise and fall of lattice theories of the liquid state

Pages 2393-2402 | Received 25 Nov 2014, Accepted 09 Jan 2015, Published online: 03 Aug 2015

References

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  • See, for example, E.A. Guggenheim , J. Chem. Phys. 7 , 103 (1939).
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  • R.H. Fowler , Statistical Mechanics: The Theory of the Properties of Matter at Equilibrium (Cambridge University Press, 1929), p. 7. The same sentences are repeated in the second edition of 1936. This book was revised and made more accessible to chemists by R.H. Fowler and E.A. Guggenheim , Statistical Thermodynamics (Cambridge University Press, 1939). The revision was largely the work of Guggenheim (1901–1970); see F.C. Tompkins and C.F. Goodeve , Biog. Mem. R. Soc. 17 , 303 (1971).
  • J.C. Maxwell , Theory of Heat (Longmans Green, London , 1871). Four more editions appeared before his death in 1879 and the same doubt about the speed of molecules in liquids was expressed in later editions, Lord Rayleigh , editors, up to 1916; J.S. Rowlinson , Mol. Phys. 103 , 2821 (2005).
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  • L.S. Ornstein and F. Zernike , Proc. Sec. Sci. Acad. Amsterdam 17 , 793 (1914). The paper was read to the Academy in Dutch in September 1914 but was soon published in English. The paper was reprinted as Paper III-1 by H.L. Frisch and J.L. Lebowitz , editors, The Equilibrium Theory of Classical Fluids (Benjamin, New York , 1954).
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  • R.H. Fowler , ref. 4, opening sentence of chap. 13.
  • John Jones (1894–1954) was born in Lancashire, studied mathematics at Manchester where he learnt about the properties of gases from Sydney Chapman. He learnt then about the theory of crystals at Bristol, and about quantum mechanics at Göttingen, before he moved in 1932 to the new Plummer chair of theoretical chemistry at Cambridge. He assumed the name by which he is now known on his marriage to Kathleen Lennard in 1925. He contributed the chapter on ‘Intermolecular Forces’ to the first edition of Fowler's book, ref. 4. A.F. Devonshire worked with Lennard-Jones in the 1930s and moved after the war to the Physics Department at Bristol where he studied the properties of ferroelectrics.
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  • H. Eyring and J.O. Hirschfelder , J. Phys. Chem. 41 , 249 (1937); J.F. Kincaid and H. Eyring , ibid . 43 , 37 (1939). Henry Eyring (1901–1981) had a somewhat eccentric understanding of statistical mechanics. His greatest achievement was his treatment of chemical reaction rates by means of what is usually called the ‘activated complex theory’. His involvement with the theory of liquids was less impressive, culminating in what he called the ‘significant structures’ theory which never attracted much support: H. Eyring and M.S. Jhon, Significant Liquid Structures (Wiley, New York, 1969). There was a revealing encounter at a Gordon Conference on liquids in New Hampshire in, I believe, the late1970s, when Eyring was giving a paper on his idiosyncratic views on liquids to an audience that contained Joseph Mayer (1904–1983), a man who was a careful mathematician who had done much to develop the theory of compressed gases and to derive some precise results for the properties of molecular canonical distribution functions in fluids. We were all seated at school desks and when Eyring embarked on one of his more obscure flights of fancy about the structure of a fluid surrounding a lattice site, Mayer had had enough. He stood up, banged down the lid of his desk, exclaimed ‘What the devil is a ring of degeneracies?’, and stalked out. Eyring continued unabashed. His student, Joseph Hirschfelder (1911–1990) was a more orthodox character who, after the War, made his career at the University of Wisconsin, which soon ranked with Cambridge and Princeton as one of the leading centres in which lattice theories of liquids flourished.
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  • J.A. Barker , Lattice Theories of the Liquid State (Pergamon Press, Oxford , 1963), p. 63. John Barker (1925–1995) wrote this short monograph at a time when it was still hoped that a sound theoretical basis could be found for lattice theories but he himself was already becoming more sceptical and was soon to find a better theory; J.S. Rowlinson , Biog. Mem. R. Soc. 42 , 13 (1996). E.G.D. Cohen's Amsterdam thesis of 1957 ‘On the theory of the liquid state’, written under de Boer's supervision, was also a work confined to lattice theories.
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  • J.E. Mayer and M.G. Mayer , Statistical Mechanics (Wiley, New York , 1940), p. 319.
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  • Fowler and Guggenheim, ref. 4, §814; A. Münster , ref. 15, p. 642. Guggenheim later endorsed this guess in Mixtures (Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, 1952), p. 24.
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  • The Royal Society of Chemistry has a medal which can be awarded only for advances in experimental chemistry. When in the 1970s candidates came forward who had made their contributions by means of computer simulation it was decided, after some discussion, that this field was experimental, not theoretical.
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  • H.N.V. Temperley , J.S. Rowlinson and G.S. Rushbrooke , editors, Physics of Simple Liquids ( North-Holland, Amsterdam , 1968).
  • J.P. Hansen and I.R. McDonald , The Theory of Simple Liquids (Academic Press, New York , 1976).
  • J.H. Hildebrand , The Solubility of Nonelectrolytes (Reinhold, New York , 1923); R.L. Scott , ibid. 3rd ed. (1950); J.H. Hildebrand , J.M. Prausnitz and R.L. Scott , Regular and Related Solutions (Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York , 1970).
  • S. Sugden , The Parachor and Valency (Routledge, London , 1930).

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