Abstract
Henry's law, published first in 1803, relating the solubility of a gas in a given solvent to the pressure of the gas, was a limited statement of the distribution law. In 1872, Berthelot and Jungfleisch found the same principle applied to the partition of iodine between the two immiscible solvents carbondisulfide and water. Nemst, in 1891 formulated the law in general terms, thus: |At a given temperature a substance present in two phases in equilibrium is distributed between the two phases in a definite ratio of concentrations, provided it is not different chemically in the two phases. The law may be expressed mathematically, thus: |C2/c1 = Ed (1) |In which C1 and C2 are the concentrations of the substances in the two phases, and is the distribution constant.