In chemistry, Charles Skeele Palmer (1858-1939) was an American chemist noted for his 1895 English translation of German physical chemist Walther Nernst’s 1893 Theoretical Chemistry: from the Standpoint of Avogadro’s Rule & Thermodynamics, wherein he mistakenly mistranslated Austrian physicist Ludwig Boltzmann’s 1886 conjecture that the “struggle for existence is a struggle for entropy” to read “the struggle for existence is a struggle for free energy”, which in the century to follow resulted in a number of mis-interpretations of Boltzmann’s original statement about evolution and thermodynamics. [1]
Education
Palmer completed his AB and MA at Graduate Amherst College, his PhD at Johns Hopkins, after which he spent a year doing post-doctoral studies at the University of Leipzig, Germany, where he learned about the new physical chemistry from German physical chemist Wilhelm Ostwald. At one point Palmer was the head of the chemistry department of the University of Colorado. [2]
References
1. (a) Nernst, Walther. (1893). Theoretical Chemistry from the standpoint of Avogadro's rule and Thermodynamics (Theoretische Chemie vom Standpunkte der Avogadroschen Regel und der Thermodynamik). Stuttgart, F. Enke, 1893 [5th edition, 1923].
(b) Nernst, Walther. (1895). Theoretical Chemistry: from the Standpoint of Avogadro’s Rule & Thermodynamics (Book III, ch. VII: Photo-Chemistry, pgs. 617-; section: Theory of Photo-Chemical Action, pgs. 626-28; strife quote, pgs. 227-28). MacMillan and Co.
2. Solberg, Winton U. (2000). The University of Illinois, 1894-1904: the Shaping of the University (pg. 105). University of Illinois Press.
External links
● Palmer, Charles Skeele (1858-) – WorldCat Identities.
● Charles Skeele Palmer (about) – Presidents of the Colorado Scientific Society.
