The 1960's

There were two books published in 1960 of interest to microanalysts:  The third edition of Geilmann's Bilder zur qualitativen Mikroanalyse....[Geilmann, W. (1934, 1954, 1960)], and Alimarin and Petrikova's Inorganic Ultramicro Analysis  [Alimarin, I.P. and M.N. Petrokova (1960)]. Geilmann’s atlas has 403 figures (photomicrographs) in 52 plates. The book is very economical of space, and one of the many nice features is that the sensitivity in micrograms is given for almost all of the microcrystal tests.  The quality of the black-and-white illustrations is excellent.

The first edition of Weisz's Microanalysis by the Ring-oven Technique [Weisz, Herbert (1961 and 1970)], was published in 1961; the second edition appeared in 1970 (Figure 54).  Fritz Feigl, who wrote the Foreword for the second edition, first learned of Weisz's approach after World War 2, and saw the first simple model of the ring oven shortly thereafter; he regards the method as an important milestone in spot test analysis.

click image to enlarge (173K) Figure 54. Front cover of Weisz’s Microanalysis by the Ring-Oven Technique, Second Edition (1970).

One of my all-time favorite books was published in 1964: A.A. Benedetti-Pichler's Identification of Materials via Physical Properties, Chemical Tests, and Microscopy [Benedetti-Pichler, A.A. (1964)].  This book "deals with the investigation of things as they are without any limitations as to the scope. It emphasizes the identification of materials - inorganic, organic, organized (biological), common, rare, described or not described in the accessible literature - as they actually occur in nature and industry, or are met in the investigation of mishaps and crime."  I love the bold inclusiveness of it all - everything, regardless of nature or origin.  When he wrote this book and it’s Preface in 1963, Dr. A. A. Benedetti-Pichler was already retired Professor of Chemistry at Queens College, New York.  He was born in Austria and educated at the Polytechnic Institute at Graz.  He taught there until 1929, and then came to the United States and joined the faculty of New York University.  He was active in organizing the Division of Analytical Chemistry of the American Chemical Society, and was also the founder of the American Microchemical Society.  He had received the Pregl Prize of the Vienna Academy of Science in 1933, and the Emich Plaque of the Austrian Microchemical Society in 1955.  How fortunate we are that he finished this book.  It was published in 1964, and he died on December 10th of that same year.

In 1967, Hans Keune produced his beautiful atlas of microchemical tests, which is laid out in the same way that The Particle Atlas is.  His book (Figure 55), Bilderatlas zur qualitativen anorganischen Mikroanalyse [Keune, Hans (1967)], is highly illustrated with photomicrographs in black-and-white and color (Figure 56).  All of the reagents and procedures are coded, and it is awkward to use at first, but usage brings familiarity with the abbreviations.  The sensitivity limits are given for each microchemical test.  This is a beautiful and very useful book, which is now difficult to obtain.

Charles C. Fulton’s Modern Microcrystal Tests for Drugs [Fulton, Charles C. (1969)], was published in 1969, and is still a standard reference work in drug identification.  All of the modern schemes incorporate Fulton’s tests.

click image to enlarge (134K) Figure 55. Dust jacket title of Keune’s Bilderatlas zur qualitativen anorganischen Mikroanalyse (1967).

click image to enlarge (166K) Figure 56. One of the color-plate pages from Keune’s Bilderatlas zur qualitativen anorganischen Mikroanalyse (1967).