The Form of the Atoms in Relation to their Spectra

Abstract

SINCE Balmer's important discovery in 1885 that it is possible to calculate the wave-lengths of the first nine lines of the hydrogen spectrum by means of a simple formula, the existence of series of lines, obeying simple mathematical laws, has been established in the case of the spectra of several other elements, notably by the researches of Rydberg and of Kayser and Runge. Among the various attempts that have been made to account for these series of lines, and, in general, for the different spectra, the most promising seems to be that of Prof. F. von Lindemann, of Munich, who in some recent papers1 has more fully developed an idea that he was first led to enunciate in 1888, after the publication of Lord Kelvin's Baltimore lectures on molecular dynamics. Prof. von Lindemann's method consists, not in deriving an empirical relationship between the wavelengths or frequencies of the spectral lines, but in investigating mathematically the possible waves which a hypothetical atom can send out into the luminiferous ether.