Tracing the origins of the Physical Chemistry textbook

Have you ever wondered who pioneered the organizing of physical chemistry into a textbook science? Well, it will come as no surprise to the curious that it was the same people who pioneered the science itself in the late 19th century: principally Wilhelm Ostwald, J.H. van ‘t Hoff and Svante Arrhenius. This Nobel Prize-winning trio were respectively German, Dutch and Swedish, so it set me wondering how the first English language textbooks came into being. Much of the answer seems to lie with...