Item 161 - Letter from Edward Turner

ET [Professor of Chemistry at University College, London] has carefully looked over WW's essay on notation ['On the Employment of Notation in Chemistry', Journal of the Royal Institution, 1831]. He has conversed with Mr Prideaux of Plymouth on the subject, 'and found he objected considerably, on the ground of your notation occupying rather more room than that of Berzelius [J. J. Berzelius], he having lately introduced a table of Equivalents with symbols, and declaring that he could not have used yours for want of space. He doubted also the utility of having the results of analyses arranged as mathematical formulae, an objection obviously arising from his not having weighed the question fully'. ET has discovered no chemical errors. However, it is 'essential that chemists and mineralogists should agree in their symbols. Speaking as a chemist it appears essential to employ invariably the initial letter of a word to designate the element and not its oxide'.