BULLETIN FOR THE HISTORY OF CHEMISTRY
Volume 51, 2026
Greenberg, Arthur, “Attempts During the Eighteenth Century to Quantitate Chemical Affinities in Order to Predict the Courses of Chemical Reactions,” Bull. Hist. Chem., 2026, 51, 71-82.
https://doi.org/10.70359/bhc2026v051p071
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Abstract/Description: In 1718, Étienne-François Geoffroy published the first table of chemical affinities. It was based upon his own experiments and the observations of earlier "chymists" of the previous century and earlier. Much like the development of the periodic table over 150 years later, it was an attempt to provide an organizational structure for the developing science of chemistry. Following the dissemination of Geoffroy's and subsequent tables of affinities, the eighteenth century witnessed some attempts to quantitate observed chemical affinities and even employ them for predictive purposes. While single-displacement reactions were understood and could be employed within a single column of the affinity table (AB + C → AC + B), attempts to make predictions of double displacements (AB + CD → AC + BD) were fraught. The discoveries and insights of Claude Berthollet, at the start of the nineteenth century, illustrated both the shortcomings of knowledge of double displacement, based upon simple affinities and established some early principles of chemical equilibria. The development of thermodynamics, and the concept of free energy, during the nineteenth century, provided the physical basis for chemical affinity. Atomic theory, stoichiometry, and chemical bonding theory provided the rationale for understanding the organization of chemical compounds and their relative stabilities. These nineteenth-century and later developments will only be briefly mentioned.