Equilibrium in Solutions and Surface and Colloid Chemistry

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This volume brings together two previously unpublished works by the late George Scatchard. One of the most eminent physical chemists of this century, Scatchard, in collaboration with Edwin Cohn, had enormous influence on the development of protein chemistry. The “Scatchard Plot,” a device for evaluating the interaction of proteins with smaller molecules, is today a ubiquitous feature of articles on biochemistry, immunology, and endocrinology.

These two monographs concern the laws of thermodynamics and the Oebye-Huckel theory as they are applied to the physical chemistry of inorganic and organic systems in solution. A unique feature of both works is their detailed extension of thermodynamic principles to the interactions of dissolved proteins with each other and with small molecules. They represent one of the most important links between the classical physical chemistry of the first four decades of this century and the contemporary science of protein chemistry.

Known previously only to a limited audience of Scatchard’s students and colleagues, these remarkable treatises deserve much wider circulation today. Succinct, comprehensive, and systematic, they will stand as useful guides to one of the central sciences of our time.