Eminent Chemists of Our Time

EMINENT CHEMISTS O F O UR TIME

E M N H B NJA I HARROW, P . D . Associate in Physiological Ch emistry

ILL US TRATED

W M

NEW YORK

D . V A N N O S T R A N D C O M P A N Y EIGHT WARRE N S TREET

PREFACE

We have several books deal ing with the history of chemistry ; there are a number of biographies of pioneer — l chemists ; but, so far a s I am aware and this inc udes books in French and German as well a s in English l the chemists of our time have been ignored complete y . The Dickenses and Thackerays of chemistry have — l received attention not any too much , to be sure ; but m ll the odem s , the Anatole Frances and We s, have received none . H To fill such a want is the object of this work . ow much these men and woman who are here treated are of our time may be gauged from the following : of the eleven whose lives and work are discussed, one died in

1 897 (through suicide , be it a dded) ; three , in 1 90 7 ;

1 1 1 one , in 9 1 ; one , in 1 91 6 ; one , in 1 9 9 ; and four are

The question may very naturally be a sked , why were just these eleven selected? To this I would answer, that, with the historical perspective in mind , I wished to review the achievements of those men whose work is indissolubly bound up with the progress of chemistry

la o during the st generation or so . I wished , then , t write a history of chemistry of our times by centering it a m round so e of its lea ding figures . This book aims to fill the wants of three cla sses of men

1 . The chemist who wishes an account of the labors of o Pr f . W l l and the late Prof . R . Me do a , Finsbury College , London ,

ll . ll r. England ; to my co eagues , Dr E . G . Mi er , I ,

d . . . Whit it l o C l m a . an s C o u bi Univ , Mr J E , De Witt int n l n m High Schoo , N . Y . ; a d to y wife .

a I wish also to thank the editors of S cience , the Journ l of the Franklin Institu te and S cientific Monthly for l permission to reprint some of the articles . BENJAMIN HARROW N k ew Yor , 1 92 0 .

1 The work as originally written consisted of two parts : th e ” lives h i h rk (whic const tutes the present volume) and t e wo . The latter was an exha ustive review of the scientific work of the hemi nd c sts u er discu ssion. Complete bibliographies were ap ended to each icle . Howe er a m in en ion wa wri e p art v , s y t t s to t a o ular l e h n or i d n h h e p p vo um , and as t e seco d p t on eali g wit t work d nd r d h k d d woul have u uly enla ge t e boo , I deci e to post ne po publishing this part for the pre sent.

vii

CONTENTS

Introduction Perkin and Coal-Tar Dyes Mendeléeff and the Periodic Law Ramsay and the Ga ses of the Atmosphere Richards and Atomic Weights ’ van t Hofi and Physical Chemistry Arrhenius and the Theory of Electrolytic Disso

ciation

Moissan and the Electric Furnace Madame Curie and Radium

i m V ctor Meyer and the Rise of Organic Che istry . m Re sen and the Rise of Chemistry in America .

d e m Fischer an th Che istry of Foods .

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Pa ge Several eminent chemists Frontispiece opposite ’ Perkin s apparatus for determining optical activity opposite 1 2

D . Mendeléefi opposite 1 9 2 7 4 1

’ Ramsay s appara tus for the isolation of argon opposite

o os t T . W . Richards . pp i e Relation of the atomic weights of the elements to other properties opposite L A room in the Wolcott Gibbs aboratory , Harvard opposite

’ Van t Hoff and Ostwald opposite S vante Arrhenius opposite Henri Moissan opposite

’ Moissan s appara tus for preparing Fluorine and his opposite opposite

. site P Curie . oppo opposite

’ V . Meyer s apparatus for determining vapor density opposite Ira Remsen opposite Emil Fischer opposite

’ r a o osite Fische s pparatus used in protein work . pp

xi

INTRODUCTION

DERNchemistry, little more than a century l old , shows several outstanding andmarks in

its evolutionary course . These may be cla ssified into ( 1 ) The Foundation Period ; - (2 ) The Cla ssification Period ; (3) The Physico Chemical - Period ; and (4) The Period of Ra dio Activity .

T a t Pe od . a a L T1. he Found ion ri M ny reg rd avoisier 1 — m m s ( 743 94) as the father of odern che istry . He Wa unquestionably one of its chief founders , if only because l of the immrtance he atta ched to the use of the ba ance . m With its help he gave us our odern idea of combustion , and established the law of the conservation of ma ss, which tells us that in all chemical reactions the total weight of the products formed is always equal to the

w a a . a ma eight of the re cting subst nces M tter, then , y undergo change , but it cannot be created, and it cannot o be destr yed , l

2 o l 1 — . The Classifica ti n Periodf Boy e ( 62 7 9 1 ) wa s the first to distinguish clearly between elements and m — co pounds substances which cannot, and substances h whic can be decomposed . The atomic theory of Dalton ( 1 766 with its conception of the atom a s the unit in all chemical changes , must rank in importance ’ La o with voisier s pi nee r work in quantita tive chemistry . The atom and the molecule were further stu died by Avoga dro ( 1 776-1 856) and Cannizzaro ( 1 82 6 with results which led to the system of chemical nomen clature in common use today. S tudies in the structure of compounds, and the cla ssification of the elements xiii a s the eighties of the

l s Then came a remarkab e change . This wa

but , to a greater degree ,

a re ching principles . INTRO DUCTION

’ a re- l S ome , fired by Moiss n s genius , entered the fie d of inorganic chemistry ; many of the younger generation — turned to the physico chemists ; some , however, fa s ’ cinated by such brilliant work a s Fischer s application l of synthetic chemistry to bio ogy and medicine , extended their researches into the domain of physiological chem i stry . - od o Radio Activit . 4 . The Peri f y The study by physicists of the discharge of electricity through ga ses ultimately le d to the discovery of ra dium by Madame - -a i Curie . To day ra dio ct vity is a distinct science ; yet m a he r a a s la a s 1 8 ! M e . Curie beg n rese rches te 98 Radioa ctivity ha s already shed a flood of light on the s l structu re of the atom . It ha shown conc usively that the atom is far from being the smallest possible particle , ’ o though it ha s, if anything, c nfirmed Dal ton s original m al a a la view that che ic re ctions t ke p ce between atoms . Of transcendent importance is the conclusion these studies lead to : that wherea s chemistry deals with r r eactions be tween a toms , a dioactivity deals with reao o om ti ns within the at . The two types of a ctivity are m o o quite distinct fro ne an ther ; to such an extent, in m fact, that Wherea s che ical reactions can be controlled , radioactivity ha s thus far proved entirely beyond the control of man, for no human device seems to increa se or decrea se such a ctivity .

Addendu m

Chemist A ca ry in meri . The history of chemistry in m a in l A eric is discussed the artic e on Remsen . Here it needs but to be pointed out that Remsen bears the same relation to the va st army of brilliant American - chemists of to day that Johns Hopkins University bears to higher education in the United S tates .

X V EMINENT CHEMIS TS OF OUR TIME

The various items discussed in this introduction may now be tabulated in chronological order :

o l : l m . 1 66 1 . B y e e e ents : m and I 777 ~ Lavoisier co bustion conservation of mass .

: a m o . 1 80 8 . Dalton to ic the ry

o : m l l . 1 8 1 1 . Av ga dro o ecu es 2 ijhler : a— 1 8 8 . W synthesis of ure the first case of the al o a l artifici producti n of typica animal product . of m Perkin : discovery auve , the first dye ob l- tained from coa tar. : m l Cannizzaro atom and o ecule . m l Kekule suggests ring for u a for benzene . fi : o m Mendelée peri dic syste of the elements . ’ van t Hoff and Le B el : structural chemistry mm (theory of the a sy etric carbon a tom) . Remsen is appointed professor of chemistry at t Johns Hopkins Universi y.

Victor Meyer discovers thiophene , opening up

an immense chapter in organic chemistry . Emil Fischer begins work on the synthesis of

sugars .

Moissan : isolation of fluorine . ’ van t Hofi theory of solution .

Ramsay and Raleigh discover argon . : a m Mme . Curie r diu . Moseley : atomic numbers (see the article on

Richards) . : Richards ra dioactive lead .

xvi

EMINENT CHEMIS TS OF OUR TIME

i s 1 Perk n wa born in London in 838. He wa s the youngest son of George Fowler Perkin , a builder and ’ contra ctor, who had apparently decided his son s future before the la tter had discarded his swa ddling clothes .

Perkin, Jr. , wa s to be an architecti

r. lf But Perkin, J , ha d not yet decided for himse .

Perhaps it wa s a street car condu ctor one day, a prime h d minister t e next , an an engine driver the third . And ’ then again , watching his fa ther s carpenters at work, he wished to become a mechanic of some kind ; and pl ans for buildings fired him with the ambition of becoming a painter.

In any case , in his thirteenth year he had an oppor l tunity of watching some experiments on crysta liza tion . It goes without saying that he forwith decided to be a chemist Were it not that about this time Perkin entered the l City of London S choo , and there came in contact with l l one of the science ma sters, Mr. Thoma s Hal , this atest decision might have been a s fleeting a s his previous ones . a The City of London S chool, like all important educ tional institutions of the day, considered science a s an imposter in the curriculum , so that whilst La tin received ’ l l a considerable slice of the day s attention , po or itt e chemistry could be squeezed in only in the interval set a or side f lunch . e w l A f w boys , and among them Perkin , ere sufficient y interested to forego many of their lunches and watch “ ” o T mmy Hall perform experiments . ’ Hall s infectiou s personality ma de young Perkin all mi and enthusia stic . He wa s going to be a che st , he w s o and a going to the Royal College of S cience , f which, o l im f its renowned chemical professor, Hall had to d h m uch. ’ ’ Hall s earnest pleading finally overcame the father s

Opposition , and in his fifteenth year Perkin entered the ” 1 s a College . Mr . W . Crookes , the a ssi t nt, was the one immediately in charge . or The hea d profess wa s Hofmann , an imported and ll a r a product . S o suggestive i ustr tive were the g e t ’ Chemist s lectures that, in the second semester, Perkin begged and obtained permission to hear them once again . In the laboratory Perkin wa s put through the routine ’ in qu alitative and quantitative chemistry, Bunsen s ga s a s analysis methods serving a s an appendix . This w ro followed by a research p blem on anthracene , carried ’ out under Hofmann s direction , which yielded negative results, but which paved the way for su ccessful work o o l m o h h l later. His sec nd pr b e n nap t y amine proved ul somewha t more successf , and wa s subsequently pub lished in the Chemical Jou rnal— the first of more than

eighty papers to appear from his pen . When but seventeen Perkin alrea dy ha d shown his mettle to such an extent that Hofmann appointed him to s s an a s istantship . Thi otherwise flattering appoint

ment had , however, the handicap that it left Perkin no m f ti e or research . To overcome this the enthu sia stic x a la a boy fi ed up bor tory in his own home , and there , and in the evenings, in vacation time , the la d tried x l a o o e p or ti ns int unknown regions . The celebrated experiment which wa s to give the - - 1 7 year old lad immortality for all time wa s carried ou t in the little home laboratory in the Ea ster va cation of 1 8 6 o 5 . It ar se from some comments by Hofmann on the desirability and the possibility of preparing the al alo u a k id, q inine , rtificially.

1 The l S ir W r ate . C ookes. could be produ ce

to have ha d mor tried all he l a d undertaking. And et it be dded that in that ay, to ’ any man with any pra ctical common sense , Perkin s m m venture seemed doo ed fro the start .

A site for the fa ctory wa s obtained at Greenford Green, mm near Har row, and the building co enced in June , 1 857 . ” l At this time, wrote Perkin years ater, neither I nor my friends had seen the inside of a chemical d s works, and whatever knowledge I ha wa obtained o o r ou from books . This, h wever, wa s n t so se i s a draw back as at first it might appear to be ; a s the kind of apparatus required and the chara cter of the operations to be performed were so entirely diflerent from any in ” om use that there was but little to copy fr . The practical diflicultie s Perkin had to overcome were

such that, in comparison, the a ctual discovery of the r dye seems a small affair. S ince most of the appa a tu s

that wa s required could not be obtained, it ha d first to all l be devised , then tested, and fin y app ied .

Nor was this all . Ra w ma terial s necessary for the manufacture of the dye were a s scarce a s some rare l m - or e e ents are to day. Aniline itself wa s little m e than

a curiosity, and one of the first problems wa s to devise m a fa rom ethods of m nu cturing it f benzene . wa The country s searched high and low for benzene . all l Fin y Messrs . Miller and Co . , of G a sgow , were found l to be ab e to supply Perkin with some quantity, but the

price was a gallon, and the quality so poor that it had ill to be redist ed . Now the first step in the conversion of benzene to a li wa s ni ne to form nitrobenzene , and this required ni ri and l h r t c su p uric a cids in a ddition to benzene . He e again the market did not offer a nitric acid strong enough r m for the purpose . This had fir st to be manufa ctured f o C l l hi i sa tpeter and oil of vitriol (sulphuric acid) , and al speci apparatus ha d to be devised . 5 EMINENT CHEMIS TS OF OUR TIME

’ Béchamp s discovery three years earlier, that nitro benzene could be converted into aniline by the action of finely divided iron and acetic a cid wa s now developed o f r indu strial use, and here again S pecial apparatus had to be devised . - To da y the most fundamental Operations in every dye — factory are nitration the conversion, say, of benzene to — nitrobenzene and reduction - the conversion of nitro o benzene to aniline . The mode of pr cedure , the tech — nique , the appara tus all are ba sed on the work of this - - l l eighteen year o d ad . Only those who have attempted to repeat on an industrial scale what ha s been su ccess ll fully carried out in the laboratory on a small scale , wi l a ppreciate the difficu ties to be overcome , and the extra ordinary ability that Perkin must have possessed to m m have overco e the . Think of a Baeyer who synthe sized indigo ih his university laboratory, and then think of the twenty years of continuous labor that was t e a quired before the Badische Anilin F brik, with its hundreds of expert chemists and mechanics , wa s in a l position to produce indigo in quantity. And it wou d have taken them and others much longer but for the pioneer work of young Perkin . ’ om S e have described Perkin s discovery a s accidental . r a s Pe h ps it wa . But consider the way it wa s perfected and made available ; consider with what extra ordinary a bility every related topic was handled ; consider how mo o every ve was a new move , with no previ us experience to guide him ; and who but one endowed with the quality of genius could have overcome all this? Hertz dis o c vered the key to wireless telegraphy, but Marconi brought it within reach of all of us ; Baeyer first synthe sized indigo , but the combined labors of chemists in the largest chemical fa ctory in the world were necessary before artificial indigo began to compete with the 6 WE LIAM HENRY PERKIN natural product ; Perkin both isolated the first arti fi m l ficial dye stu and ade it usefu to man . In less than six months aniline purple Tyrian — purple it wa s at fir st called wa s being used for silk ’ - m dyeing in a Mr . Keith s dye house . The de and for it became so great that many other concerns in England, and particularly in France , began its manufacture . “ ” ” In France it wa s renamed mauve , and mauve it has remained to this day. ’ Perkin s improvements continued uninterruptedly, and his financial success grew beyond all expectations . He found that the uneven color often obtained in dyeing on silk could be entirely remedied by dyeing in a soa p a bath . The use of t nnin a s one of the mordants ma de l it applicab e to cotton, and sha des of various kinds and depths of any degree could be a ttained without any o l difliculty. A process f r its u se in ca ico printing wa s l a so worked out successfully. l r When , three years ate , Verguin discovered the im — portant magenta or, a s it is sometimes calle d, fuchsine — l l m and ater sti l Hof ann , his rosaniline , various details ma of in the nufacture mauve and its application to silk, l cotton and ca ico printing, were appropriated bodily. Young Perkin ha d given tremendous impetu s to t e a nd a l se rch in pure a pp ied chemistry . In the prepara o o ti n f dyes, substances which had , until then, been curiosities , ha d now become necessities , and methods fo r o d r their p eparati n ha to be devised . This led to al l l r h inc cu ab e research in o ganic c emistry . In fact, it is hardly too mu ch to say that the ba sis for most of the development in organic chemistry since 1 856 lies in ’ m Perkin s discovery of auve . has not l ll Industry been the on y benefactor. It wi be m re embered that u sing the dye , methylene blue , a s a

staining agent, Koch discovered the bacilli of tubercu 7 upon his fine lecture . - S uch dimensions ha s the coal tar

chemical constitution of

o ’ t dyes, also engaged Perkin s to contribute what was to prove of papers to the Transactions In 1 866 he wa s elected to a

Society . The year 1 868 is memorable a s da ting the first

EMINENT CHEMIS TS OF OUR TIME

details of the entire process of manufa cturing alizarin,

‘ 1 exha u stively investiga ted . By the end of 869 one ton of the coloring matter in the form of a pa ste had been o 1 0 d made . This wa s increa sed to 40 t ns in 87 , an to 1 1 8 l o 2 2 0 tons in 1 87 . Until 73 , when the Germans a s began manufa cturing it, the Greenwood Green works were the sole suppliers .

In 1 874 Perkin sold his factory, and from henceforth l l devoted himself exc usive y to pure research .

Perkin exemplifies the type , more common than is o l often supposed , th ugh one entire y beyond the compre hension of the average business man, who loves the of a u h l r quiet pursuit rese rch beyond a g t e se . Pe kin exploited his discovery solely with the view of pro

i To but suflic ent for his extremely simple wants . explore unknown fields at leisure and to be freed from l mo o a l ney ma tters whilst d ing so , were his aims . When Perkin left the Royal College of Science at 1 7 he

on, but to give the very best that is in you requires m freedom fro such burdens . What le d him to give up th e fa ctory and to devote him self exclusively to pure science wa s sheer love of the subject . It is the type of love which, when a ssocia ted

a rtistic produ ctions .

After 1 874 Perkin moved to a new house in S udbury, and u l l ra o contin ed to use the o d one a s the abo t ry. His research work from now on tou ched but lightly

o l ~ 1 1 mu up n the dye situ ation . Unti 88 it centered ch

” around the action of a cetic anhydride on a group of l organic compounds known a s a dehydes . The first im

1 0 WILLIAM HENR Y PERKIN portant result that wa s here achieved wa s the synthesis of coumarin , an odorous substance found in the tonka bean . This wa s the first ca se of the production of a a l - veget b e perfume from a coal tar pro duct . These researches culmina ted in the now cla ssical ’ Perkin s S ynthesis of unsa turate d fatty acids a group reaction which is studied by every student in chemistry o-d t ay. In 1 879 Perkin wa s the recipient of the Royal Medal of he S o t Royal ociety, the other awards of the year going t l or o C au sius, f his investigation of the Mechanical The ry ‘ o f Heat, a nd Lecoq de Boisboudron , for the discovery of l the e ement gallium . The president addressed Perkin a s follows :

Mr . William Perkin has been , for more than twenty l years , one of the most indu striou s and successfu inve sti o r m gat rs of O ganic Che istry. of th mo im Mr . Perkin is the originator of one e st portant branches of chemical in du stry , that of the manu - facture of dyes from coal tar deriva tives . - Forty three years ago the produ ction of a violet blue color by the addition of chloride of lime to oil - obtained from coal tar wa s first noticed , and this having afterwards been a scertained to be du e to th e existence o o of of the organic ba se known a s aniline , the pr ducti n the coloration wa s for many years used a s a very deli a f c te test or tha t substance . a s o af The violet color in question , which w so n ter wards also produced by other oxidizing a gents , a ppeared , l of x however, to be quite fugitive , and the possibi ity fi ing and obtaining in a state of purity the aniline product o to a r to which gave rise to it , appears n t h ve occur ed m ull ra l w che ists until Mr . Perkin successf y g pp ed ith the 1 8 6 and ro u au u l olor subject in 5 , p d ced the be tif c ing o m matter known a s aniline violet , r auve , the production I I EMINENT CHEMIS TS OF OUR TIME

l l of which , on a arge scal e , by Mr. Perkin, aid the founda - l tion of the coal tar co or industry. His more recent researches on anthracene deriva i tive s, especially on art ficial alizarine , the colorihg a o matter identical with that obt ined fr m ma dder, rank among the most importa nt work, and some of them have greatly contributed to the successfu l manufa cture al o of izarine in this c untry . Among the very numerous rese arches of purely hi r h s l scientific interest w ch Mr . Pe kin a pub ished, a l l series on the hydrides of sa icy and their derivatives, may be specially refe rred to ; but among the most prominent of his a dmirable investigations are those resulting in the synthesis of coumarin , the odiferous principle of the tonquin bean an d the sweet-scented o ds uff n lo u w o t a d its homo g es . “ , The a rtificial produ ction of glycocoll and of tartaric f r a cid by Mr. Perkin conj ointly with Mr. Du ppa a fo d l x l other a dmirab e e amp es of synthetical research . It is seldom tha t an inve stigator of organic chemistry ha s extended his resear ches over so wide a range a s is r the ca se with Mr. Perkin , and his wo k ha s always com manded th e a dmiration of chemists for its accuracy and ” om l and for o al its o . c p eteness , , the rigin ity of c nception In 1 881 Perkin turned his attention in an entirely new direction , tha t of the rela tionship between the physical r h o p operties and t e chemical constitu ti n of sub stances. la l G dstone , Briihl , and other s were a ready busy con necting such physical manifestations a s refraction and o dispersi n with chemical constitu tion . Perkin no w r introduced a third physical property, first discove ed by Fara day : the power sub stances po ssess of rotating the l ol l p ane of p arisa tion when pla ced in a magnetic fie d .

’ With this general topic Perkin wa s engaged to the h hro a l year of his dea th. His work a s t wn flood of ight

1 2 om m a s a oa c pound, so e , such cet cetic ester and benzene, of x a o o being e tr ordinary fascina ti n t every chemist. — There are chemists and H . E . Armstrong is among — ’ them who regard this pha se of Perkin s life work a s m h his crowning a chieve ent . If it a s not received such

general recognition a s his earlier work, that is to be largely a scribed t o a la ck of knowledge of physics which l m mi l l o prevai ed a ong che sts unti quite recent y . H w s 1 r ever, even a s far back a 889 Pe kin wa s presented with the Davy Medal of the Royal S ociety a s a reward for his magnetic studies The yea r 1 90 6 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the - founding of the coal tar industry, and the entire sci

entific world stirred itself to do honor to the founder. A meeting wa s held on July 2 6 of tha t ye ar a t the Royal l l h Institution in London , over which Prof . R . Me do a , t e m r s nd s president of the Che ical S ociety, p e ided , a tho e in attendance included some of the most distinguished orl representa tives of science in the w d . The first part of the meeting consisted in the presen Co tation of his portrait (painted by A . S . pe , to r x the guest of the evening . A bust of Pe kin (e ecuted by o or of Ch m Mr . Pomer y, f the library the e ical o m S ociety, was next shown . In a dditi n the chair an stated tha t a fund of several thou sand pounds ha d been collected for the endowment of chemical research in the name of S ir William Henry Perkin (he ha d

m a m . been knighted. in the e nti e) C m cal Prof . Emil Fischer, president of the German he i whi S ociety, presented to Perkin the Hofma nn Medal , ch was a ccompanied with this a ddress : Die D eu tsche

he H . Perkin C mische Gesellschaft ha t H e rrn Dr. W. in Lond on fiir ausgezeichne te Leis tu ngen a uf d em Ge o d eren iir bie te d er Organischen Chemie, im bes n f I 3 EMINENT CHEMIS TS OF OUR TIME

- die Begriindung d er Teerfa rben Industrie , d en Hof - e i uli 1 906 e ma nn Preis ve rli hen. B erlin, m J , . D r a i h e ho te Pr sid en t: E . Fischer. Die S chrftfii r r: C. S c t n,

o . Pr f A . Haller, representing France , presented Perkin with the Lavoisier Medal , with this a ddress : La S ociété ’ Chimiqu e d e Pa ris, 0 l occasion d a Ju bilee d estinée a c élébrer la cinquantiéme anniversaire d e la d écou verte d e la p remiere ma tiere colorante d érivée d e la houille, e t comme témoignage d e hau te es time pou r ses tra vau x, ’ a est heureu se d ofirir c u Dr. Willi m Henri Perkin, In venteu r d e la Mau véine sa Médaille d e ’ ’ La voisier a l efligie d e celui qui fu t l un d es premiers e t d es plus illustres applica tea rs d es S ciences Chimiqu es ’ a l a t bl e ind ustrie e t la prospéri é pu iqu s. Le S ecré a — al é a e d e t ire Génér : A . B h l. L Présid ent la S ocié té

Chimiqu e d e Pa ris: Armand Gau tier. Juille t,

1 906 .

Addresses were al so delivered by Dr. Ba ekeland, of representing the chemists America ; Prof. Pa ul

Friedlander, on behalf of the scientific and technical an Romb h oll chemists of Austria ; Prof . P . v urg , H and ; rl L l Prof . H . Rupe , S witze and ; ord Ke vin , representing l l the Royal S ociety ; and Prof. Me do a , on behalf of the l m Eng ish Che ical Society . ’ A pa ssage from the Chemical S ociety s report is worth qu oting : However highly your technical a chieve m ents be rated, those who have been intimately a sso ciated with you must feel that the example which you have set by your rectitude a s well a s by your modesty and r hi o since ity of purpose is of c efest value . That y u o sh uld have been able , a s a very young man, to over come the extraordinary difliculties incident to the estab lishment of an entirely novel industry 5 0 years ago 15 a clear proof that you were possessed in an unusual degree I 4 WILLIAM HENRY PERKIN

ur e of co age , independenc of character, judgment , and resourcefulness ; but even more striking is your return into the fold of scientific workers and the ardor with which you have devoted yourself to the prosecution of — abstra ct physico chemical inquiries of exceptional diffi l “ cu ty . In the a ccount of your renowned ma ster, Hof mann, you have stated that one of your great fears on entering into technical work was that it might prevent your continuing research work ; tha t you should have felt su ch regret a t such a pe riod is sufi ciently remarkable, and it mu st be a source of enduring satisfa ction to you o l to kn w tha t your ater scientific work deserves , in the opinion of many, to rank certainly no less than your l ” ear ier.

How much Perkin wa s appreciated in Germany, where the coal-tar industry had developed into su ch gigantic o o proportions, is sh wn by the delegation that came fr m r that cou ntry . The e were Prof . Bem thsen, Dr. H . d Caro and Dr . Ehrhardt, of the Badische Anilin un - mm a li h nd S od a Fa br k . . Cle . B b c a i ; Dr Aug , Herr R , Fa b e ke ei te L c u d B itn Dr . E . Ullrich, r w r , M s r, u ius, n r

'

i ase la a . o . C l ing; Dr. Kl ngeman, C l nd Co , Pr f ar Duis a b a b be eld nd berg and Dr . Nieme , F r enf riken, El rf , a ’ - am ma Prof . Liebermann in short, the cre of Ger ny s industrial chemical fraternity . il ro And there were messages from Prof . Be stein (Pet

i mici olo a o . Canizzaro grad) , Prof . C a an (B gn ) , Pr f m s o . a a a a (Rome) , P1 0 f. Jorgen en (Copenhagen) , Pr f T k y

o o l a ro . . . (T kyo) , Pr f . Ado f B eyer (Munich) , P f J W B Z and riihl (Heidelberg) , Prof. G . Lunge ( urich) , o o lo — a o al a Pr f . Hug S chifl (F rence) an intern ti n b nd of llu u s l i strio scho ars . In the a utumn following the jubilee celebrations in a o rom London, S ir William Perkin a ccepted an invit ti n f a o the American Committee to visit its shores . V ri us 1 5 EMINENT CHEMIS TS OF OUR TIME

l N ga therings were he d in his honor in ew York, Boston,

Wa shington, etc . In New York a dinner was tendered him at Del

o oi the s ciety to the guest of the evening. Other speakers inclu ded President Ira Remsen of Johns

chi m . l a ef che ist of the Dept of Agricu ture , W shington .

Perkin died on July 1 4 , 1 90 7 . ’ o his a chi m r Aside fr m scientific eve ents , Pe kin s life l l o him wa s extreme y uneventfu . T his science wa s his

d m o a h d o life , an he see s t h ve a no av cation . We fin d - no romantic da sh, no such many sidedness , a s char

With modesty carried to the extreme , only the privileged

but few personal touches of the man in his otherwise excellent obituary a ddress, delivered to the members of a the Chemical S ociety . I th nk God , to whom I ll o m owe everything, for a His goodness t e , and a scribe ” ’ to Him all the praise and honor. This wa s Perkin s l l s C review of his life in 1 906 . A b ame es hristian, 3.

alrea dy belongs to an age long past .

1 6

Perkin Memorial Committee,

1 8

DMITRI IVANOWI TCH MENDELEEFF

the land of mystery to her western o neighb rs, occa sionally startles us by the ll al r l inte ectu giants she p oduces . The wor d ha s long sung praises of Tolstoy and Tsohai ko k ws y, and scientists have shown no less a dmira tion for the h siol t P l ff p y ogis , av ofl, and the chemist, Mendelée . " ’ Mendeléefl s Periodic La w ha s shown how the ele ’ m s - ents , the Chemi t s building stones, can be grouped to x l l e hibit striking fami y resemb ances . The cha os of the x l si ties gave p a ce to a law of natu re in the seventie s, and the law paved the way for the more remarkable r discoveries of the p esent era .

Dmitri Ivanowitch Mendeléefl wa s born in Tobolsk, o ru 1 u of S iberia , n Feb ary 7, 834 . He wa s the yo ngest l — e even, fourteen or seventeen children au thorities l ff seem to differ. On the paternal side Mende ée came from priestly stock, his grandfather, Pawal Maksim

owitch S okoloff, occu pying a modest position in the r C ur l S i l a G eek h ch ru ed by the Holy S ynod . nce ce ib cy is not obligatory for the lower clergy of this church ,

Pawai took advanta ge of s uch permission and married . l x Of his four sons, Wassili, Iwan , Timofei and A e ander,

the second, Iwan, came to be called Mendeléefi beca use early in life he dealt (exchanged) in horses mjenu d el t o m j a j t ake an exchange) . Iwan in time became a stu dent of the chief Peda i f gog cal Institu te in Petrogra d , and sometime a ter his gra duation the government a ppointed him director of m s um l ma the gy na i at Tobo sk . Here he met and rried

1 9 EMINENT CHEMIS TS OF OUR TIME

The Komiloffs belonged to an old Russian family tha t ol a l 1 ” ha d settled in Tob sk e r y in 70 0 . They were the first to introdu ce the manufa cture of paper and glass in ’ 1 8 a a a a l Siberia . In 7 7 M ri s f ther est b ished a printing d o press at Tobolsk, an tw years later he began the publi ca tion oi the Irtysch, the first newspaper ever published

’ A family tra dition ha d it that in a previous generation one of the Kornilofls ha d married a Khirgis Ta rtar m x n bea uty, thereby a d i i g their pure Russian with l om o Mongolian b ood . S e f the descendants show ed l unqu estionable orienta fea tures , but not Dmitri, the h mi c e st. ’ Mendeléefi s name ha s beenspell ed in any number of a m m ha s a a en w ys . S o eti es it ppe red a s M deleyef, d le f o sometimes Men e je , at ther times Me ndelejefl, fl and still a gain Mendélée , Mendelejew, and Men l ff s l la a s rha t l d e ée . We ha ve e ected the st pe ps he ea st confusing to English ears . ’ Dmitri, Iwan and Maria s youngest child, wa s his ’ mother s pet, who referred to him in the endearing u it e ka dimin tive , M j n . ’ S oon after Dmitri s birth his father became blind ' from a catara ct in both eyes , and this terrible calamity rom o o a t forced him to resign f his p siti n the gymna sium . ’ The govem ment s grant of a pension of one thou sand rubles wa s hardly enough to keep body and soul together . ’ At this sta ge Dmitri s mother, despite the invalid on m hil her hands, and the eight re aining c dren that needed ' l a ttention, took charge of gla ss works be onging to her family, and directed the fa ctory for a number of years

l r Dmitri showed an exceptiona memo y from the first. When seven years old he wa s sent to the gymnasium at

2 0 DMITRI IVANOWITCH MENDELEEF

Tobolsk, and here he excelled in mathematics, physics d or l d l an history, but f anguages, an particular y La tin , l n l he showed no inc i ation . To his ast day his repug l nance for the c a ssics never left him . ’ To Tobolsk many of Ru ssia s political prisoners were

sent . In those days some of them belonging to the D s s D eka s eka bri t were there . The bri ts were a group of literary men who hea ded a revolu tion in 1 82 5 with the object of establishing a constitutional government in h m Russia . The sc e e ended in failure . Five of the l eaders were executed, and many of the others were

’ h x l l exil ed to S iberia . Among t ese e i es in Tobo sk wa s l m i ’ one , Be ssagrin, who eventu al y ma rried one of D itr s elder sisters , Olga , and it wa s from this Be ssagrin that “ Dmitri received his coaching in science , an d his enthu sia sm for it.

In 1 849 , in his sixteenth year, Mendeléefl gra dua ted Bu from the gymna sium . t for his deficiency in the cla ssics he might have obtained a government stipend to continue his stu dies at a University. As it wa s, the l l government refused a l he p . ’ Two years before this, in 1 847, Mendeléeff s father ’ l i died of consumption, and to add to the mother s p ent ful store of troubles , the gla ss works which she had mana ged l r m l fir so ab y, we e co plete y destroyed by e . — Nothing da unted, and despite her a ge she was 57 — M d lé ff o m l r r . Men e e w tw a then s , ith‘the re ining chi d en l a she still ha d to care for, Dmitri and his sister E iz beth, r or left he na tive city f Moscow . She had hoped that in Moscow Dmitri could be r But w entered a s a student of the unive sity. there ere ’ lo o a stumbling b cks . Dmitri s record did not sh w th t he h l s ad been at the hea d of his c a s . Neither did ’ Dmitri s mother know any people of political importance , and without such acquaintances the only other Way of

2 1 EMINENT CHEMIS TS OF OUR TIME

removing the barrier would have been an ample supply

of funds . l Foi ed in this attempt, the three proceeded to Petro

’ Institute in Petrograd, had known Dmitri s father very

well , and through his a ssistance young Mendeléefi was

m depart ent of the Institute , and further helpe d finan i c ally by the government . i In th s same year his noble mother, full to the brim o with years of suffering, died . In the preface t his book l o on S o u ti ns, published years later, Mendeléeif feelingly refers to the woman who sacrificed so much for

This investigation is dedicated to the memory of a

ofis rin . C a a mother by her youngest p g onducting f ctory ,

she could educate him only by her own work . She ln m l structed by exa p e , corrected with love , and in order

to devote him to science she left S iberia with him,

spending thus her la st resources and strength . “ When dying she said , Refrain from illu sions , in

sist on work and not on words . Pa tiently search divine ’ and scientific truth . She understood how often dialec

tical methods deceive, how much there is still to be learned , and how, with the aid of science without vio ll lence , with love but firmness , a superstition, untruth and

error are removed , bringing in their stea d the safety of

undiscovered truth , freedom for furthe r development, general welfare , and inward ha ppiness . Dmitri Men ’ ” r d eléef regards a s sa cred a mothe s dying words .

The Pedagogical Institute , which wa s altogether l a bolished in 1 858, wa s a special training schoo for - secondary or high school teachers . Though its students met in the same buildings a s did the university students, they were a separate body. Their professors, however,

2 2

EMINENT CHEMIS TS OF OUR TIME

of the physical properties of liquids . In Heidelberg the young Russian went so far a s to set up a laboratory of

his own . Perhaps the most significant event in his European travels was his a ttendance at the Ka rlsruhe Congress of 1 r o Chemists in 860 . He e ccurred the ba ttle royal on l z a tomic weights , ed by the Italia n, Canni arro , which - ultimately paved the way for our present well de fined

system of chemical structures . Who can dou bt tha t ’ Cannizarro s exposition of the fundamental necessity of a tomic weights for elements gave Mendeléeff idea s con cerning possible rela tionships among the elements? 1 1 On his return to Petrogra d in 86 , Mendeléefi Wa s granted the D octor of S cience degree for a thesis on the ol combination of al coh with water. S oon afterwards he wa s appointed Professor of Chemistry at the Techno

The general dearth of good chemistry text-books in the Ru ssian langua ge led Mendeléefl to write one on m r s organic che ist y . His amazing indu stry i shown by the fa ct that he completed this book of 50 0 pages in two months ! In spite of the rapidity with which it w a s writ l ten , the book estab ished itself a s the best of its kin d Domi off in the language , and the d Prize of the Petro u gra d Aca demy wa s awarded the a thor. hi In 1 869 , at the age of t rty two , Mendeléefl wa s

ll a o a h m versity . His co e gue in the rg nic c e istry depart ’ l s ment, But erow , wa s Fi cher s principal forerunner in

synthetic work on the sugars .

De spite lectu res , supervision of the la boratory and nd lé ff r l various executive duties, Me e e t ans a ted Wag ’ ner s Chemische Technologie , a work of several vol u mes, into Russian, and was very active in research

2 4 DMITRI IVANOWITCH MENDELEEF

In March, 1 869 , Mendeléefl presented to the Russian “ Chemical S ociety his immortal paper on The Rela tion of the Properties to the A tomic Weights of the Ele

ments. Mendeléetf wa s not the first to believe that the ele w r not m r l l m ments e e e e y disconnected e e enta ry bodies . Thus Dobereiner in 1 82 9 pointed out that a number of the elements could be grouped in tria ds in su ch a way that the arithmetic mean of the atomic Weights of ' d o l of o the first an third w u d give that the sec nd . At this point some idea of a tomic weight must be given the general reader. Atomic Weight sounds like l the weight of an atom . That , in rea ity, is quite an om mu mall o exaggeration . At s are ch too s t be seen, let al one weighed . The number representing the atomic weight of an element is not the a bsolu te but the v of om rela ti e weight the at . Thus , when we say that the atomic Weight of nitrogen is 1 4 We mean that its atom is 1 4 times a s hea vy a s the a tom of hydrogen

(which , beca use it is the lightest element known , is - taken a s unity ) , or that its weight is 1 4 if the weight of x 1 the at0m of o ygen is 6 . We can get su ch numbers by weighing many millions of atoms of each element (con stitu ting small particles which can be seen) and then comparing their Weights with the weight of a standard l m a s o e e ent such hydrogen or xygen . The a ctual details are too technical to be discu ssed here .

Duma s, some thirty years after Dobereiner, ad vanced a similar hypothesis, extending it to groups in mis l hm organic che try . But to Newlands , an Eng is an, belongs the honor of having been the first to see fairly clearly how the eighty-odd elements could be grouped l or to show their re ationships . In a paper rea d bef e the o English Chemical S ociety in 1 866 , Newlands sh wed that the elements could be arranged in groups of eight 2 5 EMINENT CHEMIS TS OF OUR TIME al ong horizontal lines in such a way that elements in the i l l vert ca columns wou d be those with similar properties . The law of octa ves wa s given to this grouping of eights . ’ The reception of the theory by Newland s fellow mi w s che sts a anything but encoura ging. One ostenta tious busybody wished to know whether Newlands ha d tried to arrange the elements according to their initial letters ! Another suggested new possibilities in the field of music with the law of oc ta ves! The upshot of the afiair was that poor Newlands wa s sent home thor ou ghly ridiculed, and his paper wa s refused publica tion ’ al . a w in the society s journ Th t, ho ever, did not prevent the Royal S ociety from making some amends twenty one years later by a warding him its Davy Medal for the very paper which its sister organisation ha d refused to print ! i It must be a dded, however, in excuse for the scep i o or tic sm f the scientists of the day, but in no excuse f o their arrogance , that Newlands ha d not put his the ry h o to a s t or ugh a test a s he might have done . In its incompleted form its suggestions were too vague for men m steeped in experi ental work. ’ But Mendeléefl s paper three years later removed most of the objections, and forced the a ttention of the o chemists to his scheme . Mendeléefl left nothing f r granted ; his sta tements were a ccompanied by rigorous l experimenta proofs . m l a w It will be seen fro the tab e on p . 2 7 th t hen the elements are grouped in the a scending order of their atomic weights they exhibit an evident periodicity of r properties ; thus the ninth , neon , resembles the fi st, 1 m l o helium, the tenth, sodium, rese b es the sec nd,

’ 1 dro en e n does no find an a ro riate Hy g , th lighte st eleme t, t pp p la e in he p c t table .

2 6

DMITRI IVANOWITCH MENDELEEF

’ ’ Mende léefi s Winkler s Bha silicon

Ge ,

6 6; 54 69

‘ Density of oxide E8 0 2, Ge o h 4-70 3 f E 1 Density o chloride 8 0 4, Ge Ch, Le ss than 1 00 Boilin oin of chloride g p t .

ES (C 2H 5) 4, than 1 ° ° 1 60 1 60

These wonderful predictions did more to convince scientists of the validity of the law tha n anything else o could have done . The soundness of a the ry is best

exemplified by the use to which it can be put . Does it explain anomalies? Does it gu ide al ong future paths of investiga tion? The Periodic Law ha s more than ful

filled these requ irements . As a beacon it stands out a s prominently in the history of chemistry a s does ’ Dalton s Atomic Theory, which is at the very founda tion o - m m l f our science to d ay. S o e of the ost start ing dis

coveries of our time , su ch a s th e rare ga se s of the a tm osphere (see Ramsay) and the ra dioelements (see Curie and Richards) are directly attributable to the o L 2 Peri dic aw . ’ The same year that saw the publication of Mendeléefi s imm l l orta paper, that is , in 1 869 , a so witnessed the pub lic tio P m a n of his rinciples of Chemis try, which in so e

2 It should be mentioned a Chan o i rance and th t c urto s in F , Lo har e er in erman al o ed erio c cl sifica tion of t M y G y, s sugge st p di as

— - the volum es occu pied by atomic weights of the elem ents was able o o er me h e er and t unc v so striking analogie s. Lot ar M y ’ en e — M d léefl s papers were publish e d in the same year 1 869 . Th e i e i t m unqu e stionably was ripe for some su ch formulat on. In a similar w Da and alla n ar e arlie old he ay, rwin W ce , te ye s r, unf ed t

2 9

l efi Mende é experienced a s professor at the university.

Whether enviou s becau se of his reputa tion, or finding him una cceptable because he wa s not a well-d efined u m - a tocra t, the Acade y at Petrogra d bla ck balled him.

Occa sionally, because of his neutrality, Mendeléefi m t atte pted to a c a s mediator. On one of these occa 1 8 0 a r ou a t sions , in 9 , fter se i s disturb nces a the uni l o versity by the students, resu ting, a s usual , fr m the ruthless su ppression by the police of any semblance of fl freedom of thou ght, Mendelée partly pa cified the under

i the wra th of the 0 mcial m nistry upon him . In a very ‘ sharp note he wa s told to steer clear of a ught but what fl concerned him a s tea cher of chemistry . Mendelée felt this sting so deeply that he resigned from his chair om m a a t the university . S e amends were a de three ye rs later when S ergiu s Witte , the Minister of Finance , appointed him Director of the Bureau of Weights and

have been . We would have expected the author of the - Periodic La w to have empha sised the co ordinate d links in the chain , and to have presented a unified f mi picture of the whole subject o che stry . S uch , indeed , l is the testimony of his students . Mr. I . Go denberg

32 DMITRI IVANOWITCH MENDELEEF by the professor of inorganic chemistry consisted of a

collection of recipes, very hard to remember, but,

thanks to Mendeléeff, I began to perceive that chemistry

was really a science . “ The most remarkable thing at his lectures was that

the mind of his audience worked with his , forseeing the l m conc u sions he ight a rrive at, and feeling happy when l s or a he he did rea ch these conc u ions . M e th n once

said, I do not wish to cram you with fa cts, but I want you to be able to rea d chemical treatises an d other l m nd a to iteratu re , to be able to analyse the , a , in f ct, m o l m m a understand che istry . And you sh u d re e ber th t h ’ ypotheses are not theories . He wa s considered among the students a liberal o man, and they thought of him a s a comra de . M re than once during a disturbance between the students and the a dministration Mendeléefl su pported the

students , and under his influence many matters were ” put right . - Prince Peter Kropotkin, the well known Russian ’ “ o al wa s al one of Mendeléef s u . s ci ist, so f st dents I h ” “ a d the good fortune , writes the Prince , to follow , — in 1 867 9 , his lectures on both organic and inorganic s o m chemi try . The f r er wa s an abridged course , which he ha d the a dmirable idea to deliver for u s stu dents of - the mathematical branch of the physico mathematical faculty. Imagine each of these notes [referring to the footnotes in the Principles] developed into a beautiful

improvisa tion, with all the freshness of thought of a

m m . an who, while he speaks, evolves all the argu ents for and against, there on the S pot. “ The hall wa s always crowded with something like o tw hundred stu dents, many of whom , I am afraid, could no l t follow Mendeléeff, but for the few of us who cou d 4 33

DMITRI IVANOWITCH MENDELEEF

d u Observation an experience , ind ctive reasoning, submission to the inevitable , soon gave rise to a new and m more powerful , ore productive method of seeking am m truth . It thus bec e evident tha t hu an nature , o including its consci u sness and rea son, is merely a l part of the who e , which is ea sier to comprehend a s su ch from the study of external nature than of the inner l r s o man . Externa na tu e thus cea ed t be subservient to r man and becam e his equal , his f iend . Indu ctive and experimental science became a crown of knowledge , royal physics and mathematics ha d now to be content

“ La ndscape pa inting wa s born simultaneously with l l l the change , or perhaps a itt e ear ier. Thus it will probably come to pa ss that our age will hereafter be known a s the epoch of na tural science in philosophy and of landscape in art . Both derive their material s from sources external to man . Man ha s, however, not been lost sight of a s an object of study and of artistic creation, but he now appe ars, not a s a potentate or a s a ” m m ut m l s of om l l icrocos , b ere y a part a c p ex who e . ’ Mendeléefl s wife a dorned his study with pen sketches l of such scientific ce ebrities a s La voisier, Descartes, u i Newton , Galileo , Copernic s, Graham, M tscherlich, ul a m Rose , Chevre , Far a d y, Berthelot, Du a s, etc .

The family fir st lived at the university, then in a house specia lly built for the Director of the Burea u of

Weights and Mea sures . In this hou se his children by his second wife were born : Lioubov (Aimee) , Ivan i l (Jean) , and the tw n s Maria and Va ssili (Ba si e) . a nd é ff l In ppearance Me el e wa s a genuine S av.

Medium in height, rather powerq y set, with an abund a of x r s nce of hair reminding one a Paderewski , e p e sive lu b e eyes , high cheek bones , an immense forehea d, he m co manded attention wherever he went . At home he 35 EMINENT CHEMIS TS OF OUR TIME

went about in loose garments of his own design , some hi wha t after the fa s on of his illustrious compa triot,

Tolstoy.

For all the pomp of court life , in fact , for any osten h d o m ta tiou s display, he a n thing but conte pt . His presentation to Tsar Al exander III wa s made possible only by the permission which wa s given him to wear - a nything he plea sed . This embra ced non interference

with his proud locks . m r s o l His de oc acy h wed itself in pecu iar ways . For

example , he always insisted on travelling third cla ss in ro his short j ourneys f m Petrogra d to his estate , but at a o his Za ssorin wa s alwa at a the"st ti n driver, , ys h nd with of the troika and a pair magnificent greys , and the d w b ' A u fi omewhat shabby third cla ss traveller became su ddenly o transformed into the wealthy land wner. Mendeléefl wa s a Russian of the temperamental — variety a quite common variety of Ru ssian ; he wa s

rather hard to live with , at times smooth and silky in ll l speech, a t other tim es quite uncontro ab e in temper,

and for no apparent rea son . hi o Though unconcerned as to s pers nal appearance ,

Mendeléefi wa s extremely sensitive a s ~ to the way him l u people received him. He knew se f to be a geni s, om and he expected people to pay h age . In this con nection S ir William Ramsay tells of an amu sing incident Lo o which occurred at a dinner in nd n, given to W . H . Perkin in 1 884 : Iwa s very early at the dinner and

wa s putting ofl time , looking at the names of people to o r be present, when a peculia r f reigne , every hair of

whose hea d a cted in independence of every other, came are to a a oo a a up bowing. I said, We h ve g d ttend nce ’ ’ not l s . a I think . He said, I do spik Eng i h I s id, ‘ Vielleicht sprechen S ie Deutch? He replied , Ja ’ léeff. a ein wenig . Ich bin Mende I did not s y, Ich 36 DMITRI IVANOWITCH MENDELEEF

’ ’ a i a s bin Ramsay, but Ich heisse Rams y, wh ch w per m m m haps more modest . His ethod re inded e of the ’ ll d mi u o only Jones . We , we ha twenty n tes or so bef re anyone else turned up and we talked our mutual subject ll w but his ma fairly out . He is a nice sort of a fe o , Ger n a S r a is not perfect . He said he wa s raised in E st ibe i and knew no Ru ssian even till he was seventeen years K old . I suppose he is a almuck, or one of these out ” landish creatures . In 1 90 0 the Prussian Academy celebrated its two

hundredth anniversary, and the University of Petrograd l ’ sent Mendeléeff a s its de egate . At the banquet van t

Hoff presided over one of the side tables , with La den o and burg (the Breslau representative) t the right, ‘l m s Mendeléefl to the eft of hi . Mendeléeff wa an

inveterate smoker, and simply chafed because he could l lls not eat and smoke alternate y . La denburg te us that immediately after the sou p Mendeléefl began to pump those around him a s to whether he could be allowed to m an s oke . They swered him that that wa s out of the a his question . But he repe ted question after the fir st, ’ ’ and after the second cour ses . Then dear old van t f ho o a o f Ho f, w hated t see ny ne su fer so, stepped in with the risky su ggestion that he also would j oin in a mo o s ke . And the tw went to it, to the great relief of

Mendeléeff, who from then on proved an enjoyable m o d co pani n . But the sa side of the incident wa s tha t ’ f van t Ho f, who ha d begun to show incipient signs of ul had x l tuberc osis, been e press y forbidden smoking .

The present outcry against the cla ssics, and the belief by many in America and England that a portion of the classical scholarship of sta tesmen could well be dis la fo m p ced by scientific in r ation , wa s echoed by Mende léeff long before the World War empha sised the im erative a l r o 1 0 1 p necessity of uti ita ian educati n . In 9 37 EMINE NT CHEMIS TS OF OUR TIME he published a pamphlet on Rema rks on Pu blic Instruc

tion in Russia , in which there occurs the following : The fu ndamental direction of Ru ssian educa tion

~ should be living and real, not ba se d on dea d la nguages, gramma tical rules, and dialectical discussions, which l - without experimental contro , bring self deceit, illusion, l ” presumption , and se fishness . r Universal peace and the b otherhood of na tions, says ' - Mendeléefl, with, we ar e afraid, a super abundance of confidence in his view, can only be brou ght a bout by a “ l l r vita realism in schoo s . For such reforms a e re quired many strong realists ; cla ssicists are only fit to l be landowners, capita ists, civil servants, men of letters, critics, describing and discussing, bu t helping only indirectly the ca use of popular needs . We could live l at the present da y without a P a to, but a dou ble number of Newtons is required to discover the secrets of na ture , m l ” and to bring life into ha r ony with the aws of nature . From such remarks the rea der may conclude tha t l u l Mendeléeff wa s peri o s y near being a ra dical . As a ma tter of fa ct this is no near er the truth than the infer ence tha t becau se he used the third cla ss railwa y com m n a s to of o l part e t he w be considered one the pe p e . ‘ a Mendeléefi , in fa ct, wa s reg rded by many a s a rigid o o- a a ar for l m narchist . The Russ J p nese W , examp e, m o found him in the ca p of the jing s . The revolu tionary ’ outbreaks during the war, and Russia s defeat, un qu estiona bly ha stened his end . S cientific Russia , which had bestirred itself to great underta kings in 1 90 4 in ’ l r o honor of the Ma ster s seventieth ce eb a tion, f und itself little encoura ged in its proceedings by the broken S pirit a in Petrogr d .

When he wa s in his library and wrote articles, Mende léeff described himself a s an evolutionist of peacable ” type . 3 8

Some of the facts

references are 4, 6 and 7.

and Co.

an reen and Co m s, G .

40

WILLIAM RAMSAY

that elegant tribute to Ramsay, written in the days when comra deship between the l m scientists of Eng and and Ger any wa s close , Ostwald summarizes him a s one belonging m m to the ro antic type in science . Ro antic he wa s, for ’ hi m s s i agination wa unlimited . The secret of Ramsay s great triumphs lay in the fact that with this ima gination h - t ere wa s a well bal anced knowledge of the science , w ’ l ith a seer s insight into the significance of its aws .

Bold in the conception of a problem, he was brilliant beyond comparison in its execution . With no fetish to l i ho d him , with the mantle of the prophet about h m, and with amazing manipulative skill , he layed bare , in l rapid succession, a regular ittle battalion of new ga ses ll ri in the atmosphere , fo owed by transmutation expe ments which ma de the scientific world ga sp and hold its - l breath in expectancy of the next dare devil eap . l o 1 2 o This genius, born in G a sg w in 85 , did n t spring from any geniuses, but like many another man of talent , o l o r his st ck wa s of a fair y rdina y type . To be sure , l there wa s an uncle with a repu ta tion a s a geo ogist, and his own father had some scientific tastes , but nothing at l f a l to warrant such outpourings in the o fspring. When eleven years old he j oined the Third Latin Cla ss of the h Gla sgow Academy, and during t e three su cceeding years at the institution he did little La tin, gained no am a s r prizes , and did much dreaming . R s y de c ibes “ himself in a short autobiography as to a certain ex ” s r. tent precocious, though idle and dreamy young te ’ “ This fits in with Ostwald s theory of the genius : The

4 1

WILLIAM RAMS AY

d whose scholarship wa s sound , an whose research wa s Th t Tiibi methodical . e two years spent a ngen were full l t m ” of work and little p ay . I wa s up his orning, he d writes to his fa ther, at an studied and took my r m — l s om o o breakfa st f o 6 to 7, a c a s fr 7 t 8, ne from om to l ora o lu now to m 8 to 9 , fr 9 3 ab t ry (I nch have ore ’ r or and o ll r m time fo w k, d n t dine ti and f o 3 to 5 I rom to 6 l and studied , then f 5 ecture , then I dined . ” And now at 8 I must start again . And so this wa s — ll m r o sl ou kept up a the ti e , cu i u y en gh, with empha sis on organic chemistry, a branch of the science which Ramsay almost wholly abandoned in his la ter and most — ll m for P produ ctive year s ti the ti e the h . D . examine o a t a tion. On M nd y a 7 it began and la sted till l - a t 1 2 af o ha f p s ; then in the tern on from 3 to 8, so ” we ha d a good spell of it . The questions in chem istry were: (a ) the resemblances and differences be th m ou of Ca d l tween e co p nds rbon an si icon , and (b) the relation between glycerine and its newer deriva tive s and the other compounds containing three atoms of carbon ; in physics : (a) the different methods for d m ra eter ining the specific g vity of ga ses and vapors, and (b) the phenomena which may be observed in l ol li crysta s in p arised ght . I mana ged to answer the r l the w o first pe fect y, second ho ever, not s well, and two the questions in physics pretty well . Then to n ight ha we d the oral exam . The five professors who com a l Fi pose the f cu ty were there . ttig gave some very

ffi l . s di cu t questions Reu ch (Physics) , on the other a h nd , very ea sy ones We ha d to dress up and put w d ‘ on hite kids , an I had to get a tile especially for

o a o . we w r out a the cc si n Then e e sent fter the exam . for about 5 minutes and were then called in and formally l we ” to d had passed .

43 l ” toluic and nitroto uic a cids,

of the future before him, com

requirements, and he returned

University

explosives wa s not to be (1 from this to the more subject is a scribed by

' d in a ttempts some of his the Victor Meyer vapor density also add that Ramsay, with tha t

44

l were soon in full b ast . WILLIAM RAMS AY - In London his physico chemical researches were further extended . Among these , particular mention should be ma de of perhaps the most brilliant of them — all the mea surement of surface tension up to the critical ll- l temperature , which led to the we known law supp ying us with a method for determining the molecular weight m l of liquids . Here Ra say had an ab e a ssistant in

In 1 890 the British Associa tion met at Leeds, and two of the grea t Continental founders of modern physical ’ l r Chemistry, van t Hofl and Ostwa d, were p esent.

Ramsay, who represented the school in England, naturally took a keen interest in this meeting. Ram - say and Ostwald met for the fir st time a s fellow guests or o o lo in my hou se , which became a cc dingly a s rt f cyc nic center of the polemical storm that raged during the whole o s r week. The discussi n wa incessant . I e member conducting a party to Fountains Abbey on the S aturday and hearing nothing but talk of the ionic i l theory am d the beauties of S tudley Royal . The c imax, o h wever, wa s rea ched the next day, S unda y. The dis cussion began at luncheon when Fitzgerald raised the question of the molecular integrity of the salt in the soup and walked round the table with a diagram to confound ’ Hofl and l van t Ostwa d . Ramsay wa s no silent

a . spect tor Being a convinced ionist, he was eager in l o he ping out the expositi ns of Ostwal d, whose English at a m wa s m and x l th t ti e i perfect e p osive , and his wit and m la hu or p yed over the whole proceedings . It wa sthe beginning of relations of great mutual sym a and a e w p thy reg rd b t een Ramsay and Ostwal d, which la sted till they were divided by their respective national s m a at a ” 3 y p thies the unh ppy outbreak of war.

47

s l d Survey, in which he obtained a ga be ieve to be nitro rl ll gen from certain mineral s, particula y one ca ed on a a cleveite , but which wa s now suspected to c t in rgon

~ om a a s well . Ramsay lost no time . Fr it he obt ined s a m argon, to be sure , but also another ga , with spectru l an ele a l its own , which showed it to be identical with ‘ ment present in the chromosphere of the sun , and which until then ha d been considered peculiar to the sun . ” d Lockyer years a go gave the name helium to it, an now Ramsay ha d rediscovered it on mother earth .

But let the discoverer himself tell the exciting news . : 4 On the 2 4th of March , 1 895 , he writes to his wife ’ o l Let s take the biggest piece of news first. I b tt ed

the new ga s in a va cu um tube , and arranged so that I could see its S pectrum and tha t of argon in the same o r spectrosc pe at the same time . The e is argon in the ll gas ; bu t there wa s a ma gnificent ye ow line , brilliantly

bright, not coincident with but very close to the sodium ll w l wa s l a m ll ye o ine . I puzz ed but beg n to s e a rat . 5 I told Crookes , and on S aturday morning when Harley, 6 S hields, and I were looking at the spectrum in the a room l am am rom Croo d rk a te egr c e f kes . He ha d sent o 7 l a c py here and I enc ose tha t copy . You may wonder

m a . l wha t it e ns . He ium is the name given to a line la m l in the so r spectru , known to be ong to an element,

4 am e ar e R say marri d M gar t, daughter of George S tevenson Buchanan in u u s 1 881 soon f e , A g t , , a t r he ha d b e en appointe d — Principal of Bristol College a position he attaine d one year after

his arri al in ristol . his union ro e d ar i v B T p v a p t cularly happy one . To have su ch a helpmate as my Wife ha s brought me happine ss ” which must a cknowle d e wi e rea e I g th th g t st thankfu lne ss. And at a later date he wrote to a friend : You have got a good son ” and dau h er and at is mu ch to re oi a g t th j ce t. S o have I . “ S ir lliam Cr e fam u Wi ooks, th o s physicist and chemist. 5 His two a ssistants. 7 1 2 rundel ardens eir m A G , th ho e . 49 EMINENT CHEMIS TS OF OUR TIME

but that element has hitherto been unknown on earth .

8 —J graphed to Berthelot at once yesterday Gaz obtenu ‘ o l m C par moi clévite melange arg n he iu . rookes iden

a a o a m l i. tifie specfi e . F ites communic ti n Ac de ie und ’ ’ al i and I ll Ramsay. I have written Lord R e gh - ow . send a note to the R . S . [Royal Society] to morr The first public a ccount of helium wa s given to a semi bewildered a udience at the annual meeting of the chemical society in 1 895 , on the occa sion of the presenta tion of the Faraday medal to Lord Raleigh . Further investigations proved tha t helium occurred in quite a d ral ‘ number of minerals an mine waters . To Kayser, l o r i however, wa s eft the pr of of its p esence in the a r. Like argon it simply refused to combine with any other substance . i To the ancients a r was a source of investigation, and l ll it ha d remained so . Ti l 1 894 no one , lea st of a a 9 scientist, would have suspected the existence in the o l a tmosphere f undiscovered e ements . Ramsay and ’ o Raleigh s discovery sho k the scientific world. Recog om l a L l nition came fr al p rts . ord Ke vin , a s president of the Royal S ociety, presented Ramsay with the Davy ollo Medal , with the f wing comm ent : The re searches on which the award of the Davy Medal to m a hi o Professor Ra s y is c efly f unded are , firstly, those which he has carried on, in conjunction with Lord i a th e r Raleigh, in the invest g tion of p operties of argon, and in the discovery of improved an d rapid methods of a m and o getting it from the t osphere ; sec ndly, the dis covery in certain rare minerals, of a new elementary gas which appears to be identical with the hitherto hypo l l thetical so ar e ement, to which Mr. Lockyer many years “ 8 u r n emis A famo s F e ch ch t. 9 n in 1 8 did us ec ome Cave dish , 7 5 , s p t s such possibility.

EMINENT CHEMIS TS OF OUR TIME

~ i ln argon . It was evident that the unknown gas, f present, could be there in minute quantities only to have esca ped detection . That meant that the larger the quantity of argon employed the better the possibilities of getting appreciable quantities of the unknown con

stitu ent. A simple method of separating the constituents in a mixture of liquids is to boil the mixture, and collect a o o fr cti ns of the c ndensed vapor . Ea ch constitu ent will ll fl l m usua y go o at a fair y definite te perature . This, in l princip e , wa s the method employed by Ramsa y, and his s a r a s ist nt, T avers . They prepared to begin with, no less than 1 5 liters of liqu id argon ! On distilling liquid r a gon , the first portions of the ga s to boil off were found to be lighter than argon ; and on allowing the liquid air

to il off lowl a a cam off at la . bo s y, he vier g ses e st It was easy to recognise these ga ses by help of the spectroscope , for the light ga s, to which we gave the name neon or ’ the new one , when electrically excited emits a bril l liant flame co ored light ; and one of the heavy ga ses, which we called kryp ton or the hidden one is char a cterised by two brilliant lines, one in the yellow and one in the green part of the spectrum . The third gas, named xenon or the stranger gives out a greenish l b ue light, and is remarkable for a very complex spe ctrum ” l s 1 ° in which b u e lines are con picuous .

A , neon , xenon , krypton, a dded to helium and ‘trio — — argon making five new ga ses and all in the a tmos phere ! Further recognition came from the Chemical S ociety o m fl f London . They a warded Ra say the Longsta medal, given triennially to the Fellow of the Chemical S ociety

0 ~ m Wh , in the opinion of the Council, ha s done the ost “ to m Ch m m pro ote e ical science by research . If I ay

1 ° am a u R s y, q oted by Letts. 52 ” say a word of disparagement, a dded Mr . Vernon Har “ court, the president, in presenting the medal , it is — and here we can see the twinkle in his eye tha t l these elements (argon, he ium , etc .) are hardly worthy l of the position in which they are pla ced . If other e e ments were of the same unsociable chara cter Chemistry ” would not exist . ’ Ramsay s studies on helium led him to ponder over this question : why is helium found in only mineral s — which conta in uranium and thorium substa nces which give rise to ra dio-a ctive phenomena ? Attempts to a w h led him l of a -a ctivit with ns er t is into the fie d r dio y; . results which even surpa ssed his investiga tions on the

inert gases of the atmosphere . In 1 90 3 , in conjunction

with S oddy, he succeeded in proving tha t helium , an l e ement, could be produced from ra dium , another ele m l m m ent. The transmutation of the e e ents co e to life

again ! Those poor, foolish old al chemists , we were

always led to believe , wa sted their lives in vain a ttempts l to transmute the base metals into go d . And here

comes the da shing Ramsay, bold, a s usual, to a uda city, and calmly announces that his experiments prove the alchemists not to have been such fools after all ! Succeeding experiments on the a ction of ra dium sal ts on copper and lea d solu tions led Ramsay to believe that copper and lea d can undergo disintegra tion into sodium — and lithium respectively two entirely difierent ele m ents ! These la tter cla ims still wait to be verified, but there is rea sonable h0 pe for a ssuming that various experimenters throughout the world will soon undertake a ull the t sk of caref y repea ting the entire work, now that a is 11 pe ce once again with u s. A fitting awar d for these a chievements was the be stowal of l the Nobe Prize to Ramsay in 1 90 4 . The dis

S ee the article on a m M da e Curie . 53 we were there ; the Prime Minister of Norway was there ” mm wa s l o and I believe the dile a on y p stponed . s ll Ramsa y remained at Univer ity Co ege until 1 91 2 , o to when he retired . Two years pri r this , in conjunction m of m with Dr . Gray, he deter ined the density the e ana tion obtained from radium (which Ramsay named niton) involving the ma stery of experimental detail which esta b lished him once for all a s the great wizard of the labor o l m a s am a atory. The t tal vo u e of the g under ex in tion was not much beyond cubic millimeter -a bubble l o m which can scarce y be seen . T weigh this a ount at all accurately required a balance turning with a load not 1 1 o m greater than / 0 0 , o o milligra . When war broke out Ramsay placed his services a t

m . u o l the disposal of the govern ent M ch he c u d not do. r In July, 1 9 1 5 , he writes to a f iend that he ha d ha d u ol a rom several h ge p ypi extr cted f his left nostril . I have stood them for years, one gets into the habit of ” a mf a a l be ring disco orts, but it is gre t re ief. The relief m was to be only te porary . Another operation became ’ necessary in November. I wa s in the surgeon s a m 1 0 th and a a 1 h nds on Nove ber g in on the 3th, and he an a o m l a did oper ti n on y eft ntrum for a tumor, I believe ll la very successfu y. Since then, st Monday, I was - irradiated for 2 4 hrs . with X rays a s a precau tion against L l recurrence . ucki y it is of the kind which can be ” a m. a had a stopped by R diu I h ve very ba d time . l 1 He died on Ju y 2 3 , 1 9 6 . am a ha d l no R s y ived t a long life , but a very fruitful and a . r r Ir h ppy one W iting to p esident a Remsen, of

Johns Hopkins, a few months before his death Ra msay “ , l his l t ll am conc udes etter wi h We , I tired , and mu st st0 l 14 p . I ook back on my long friendship with you a s

14 Datin ack to e in g b th Tiib gen days. 55 a very happy episode in a very happy life ; for my life ” ha s been a very ha ppy one . - Ramsay wa s many sided . He w a s an excellent ex

f5 o i 1 6 phil sopher. Among mu s cians and among a rtist s

he held his own , for he wa s an a ccomplished ama teur in ist he probably ha s ha d few o of And th se us who, a s late a vote of thanks to Professor

speaker.

Of the many letters that have been preserved, perha ps none sums up so well the chara cteristics of Ramsay a s

the following, written to his friend, Dr. Dobbie :

u u s 1 other A g t, 877 .

stolen all the paper

a H vre a t present, that I or i f e gn member s, and

h S d ’ lub of t e University College tu ents C . He ha d a ery ‘v oice la e d o n accom a men an a good v , p y his w p ny ts, d w s an expert ”— i er. ehner a frien wh stl Otto H , d . 13 ’ Another amusem ent of Ramsay s was sketching in water colors a art which he ossessed no inconsiderable hare of , n in p s he en which belon o hi cousins ndre ’ t tal t gs t s , S ir A w Ram say s ”— amil . ames i f y S ir J Dobb e . 56 s m l s m that all is going a erri y a a arriage bell. Voici 5 l jours tha t I find myse f here . I went to Paris with — three spirits more wicked than myself, lawyers a fear — ful compound 3 la wyers and a chemist just like NC13 for l lia l x l om all the wor d, b e to e p ode at any m ent. I have made the acquaintance with a whole lot of chem ists, Dutch and French, and have found an old Dutch man named Gunning ravished to find someone who shares his idea s about ma tter, chemical combination, e l etc . We excurt d yesterday the who e day and talked

French and German alternately all the time . When we wanted to be particularly distinct French wa s all the o go . For energy and str ng denuncia tion German came ’ F - l of use . You can t say otz teufe ! in French or

Donnerwetter potzta u send sa cramento ! An old cove, o also a Du tchman, DeVrig, with b wly legs and a visa ge l like this (sketch profi e) is also a very nice old boy. The nose is the chief fea ture of resembla nce in the x anne ed representa tion . Wurtz and S chukenberger are both Alsa tians and of course are much more ge miithlich than the echter Franzose , but on the whole the ll o o l s fe ows I have g t t know are very p ea ant . S ome of ou lo d the y nger t an I kneipe every evening. Then we to rm 1 7 bathe every day o in fine sto y water . Eh bien, what is there to say of more? I am going straight b a ck to Gla sgow on Wednesday by the special steamer to

7 1 He (Ramsay) was a very strong and graceful swimmer and co i e f r her han an ama e uld d v u t t y t ur I have seen. When we were in Paris in 1 876 the four of u s u sed to go to one of the baths in he S eine e er forenoon and f er e im e when Ram sa t v y , a t th first t , y ad o i e the ba hm was re y t d v , t an would pa ss round the word that the n lishman wa s oin o di e h abli E g g g t v , and everyone in t e est sh ment incl in he wa sh erwoman ou de oul row in an ake , ud g t tsi , w d c d d t i n a H ba up pos tio s to w tch him. e dived the whole length of the th and sometimes turned there under water and came back a part of ” — - he e . H. e a lif t l ngth B . Fyf , e long friend. 57 cheek

SA

Tilden’ s

and Co.

London) ,

THEODORE WILLIAM RICHARDS

the latter half of the nineteenth

century William T . Richards rose to a posi

tion of prominence among American artists . rl His paintings of landscape , particula y his interpreta tions of the varying a spects of the ocean heat l ing upon bea ch and rock , won high praise and eventual y earned for him the gold medal of the Pennsylvania l m Aca demy of Fine Arts . His wife , Anna Mat ock, who - l he married in 1 856 when some twenty odd years o d,

wa s like her husband , a woman of artistic talent, though

in her ca se it showed itself in the publication of verse .

Of their six children, one of whom, Herbert Maule , is - to day a professor of botany at Barnard Coll ege , and

l . m two others, Mrs . E eanor French Price and Mrs W .

Tenney Brewster are painters, we are particularly inter

e ste d in the fourth, Theodore William, who wa s born in l the hou se of his grandfather, Dr. Charles F. Mat ock, m o l 1 1 in Ger ant wn , Philade phia , on Jan. 3 , 868.

The family were in very comfortable circumstances . In addition to their home in Germantown they had a

summer one in Newport, and occasionally they would o o l f rsa ke b th for extensive trave s in Europe .

The poor schools in Pennsylvania at that time , a s well ’ a s the uncertainty of the family s stay at any one pla ce fo r any length of time , ma de it necessary for the children l to receive private y their most elementary education . For this ta sk Mrs . Richards wa s eminently well fitted . “ Young Theodore gra dually pa ssed from Alice to o l hist ry and anguages, and with little eflort quickly over la m l took his p y ates who attended schoo . 59 EMINENT CHEMIS TS OF OUR TIME

’ Naturally the boy s first desire was to become an m n artist . Wa s not his father the greatest of e , and could a son of his do less than follow in his footsteps? o o o i Filial reverence l st n ne of its f rce with t me , but a desire to paint, slowly and quite unconsciously, gave place

even before he wa s thirteen.

d o on this track? His mother an father, a side fr m art, were very much interested in Tennyson and Browning, m and literature in general . An inti a te friend of the ’ o o u r m family s wa s Frank R . S t ckt n , the a thor. F o none of these three could Theodore have obtained much sci entific inspira tion .

There remained then his gran dfather, the doctor, and ’ — still another close friend of the family s Josiah Parsons o m Cooke , Profess r of Che istry at Harvard . That the boy got much of his inspiration from this Harvard pro m r r a fe ssor see s p etty ce t in . Even before he entered ’ Harvard Young Richards ha d alrea dy ma stered Cooke s

The Ne w Chemis try, and wa s quite a match for many ’ of the stu dents with several years chemistry to their r c edit .

Geniu s young Richards could well have inherited, in part at lea st, from his parents ; the bent of this genius towards science must to a certain extent be credited to Cooke ; but the further quality of taking infinite pains l with detai s, so essential to every scientist, and one h o u r which Ric ards p ssesses in a s p eme degree , seems to have been directly transmitted from fa ther to son. Note this description of the artist : He stood for hours in the early days of Atlantic City or Cape May l m he o o of th with fo ded ar s , stu dying t m ti ns e se a o until people thought him insane . After days f gazing, he ma de pencil notes of the a ction of the water. He

60 THEODORE WILLIAM RICHAR DS

o hi even stood f r hours in a bat ng suit among the waves, ” l mo trying to ana yse the tion . l a o i o Yet sti l n ther nheritance . What so n strikes a ’ reader in glancing over Richa rds contribu tions to chem istry is the fine unity of purpose which perva des all his work : a desire to penetrate ever deeper into the myster l s t ies of cre ation . This phi o ophical ben may be tra ced to his mother, whose verses abound with fine feeling ou and deep th ght .

Richards, barely fifteen , entered Haverford College ,

Pennsylvania , with this a dvice from his mother in his pocket arl Fear not to go where fe ess S cience leads,

Who holds th e keys of God. m At Haverford, aided by a retentive me ory and a

desire for knowledge , Richards ma de rapid strides,

pa rticularly in chemistry and a stronomy. But he wa s om ha l not a bookworm ; thou gh s ew t de icate in physiqu e ,

with eyes tha t needed careful nursing, he took an active

pa rt in the less strenu ous exercises such a s lawn tennis, i skating and swimm ng.

But Cooke wa s not at Haverford , and Richards wanted l o Cooke . He wanted him bad y n w because he , Richards , d also wanted to be a chemist, an beca use he , like Cooke , wa s particularly interested in the philosophy of chem s r r o men at a i t y. Then there we e ther H rvard whose s x o to ma ol o a cquaintance Richards wa an i us ke . W c t o d ll Gibbs, C. L . Jacks n , an H . B . Hi were men who mi o l f d counted in che cal c unci s o the ay. l ’ Richards, then, wanted to comp ete his bachelor s degree at Harvard . The rea sons he gave for desiring to change were quite sufficient for his parents. They r o do unde st od and encouraged, a s they continued to to of s the end their da ys . Their motto from the first wa : ’ give him the best that s in you, but let nature play its

6 1 EMINENT CHEMIS TS OF OUR TIME

part ; guide much, but force nothing. So Richards set out for Cambridge, there to join the senior cla ss . In the ll a 1 886 ha l l . fo owing ye r ( ) Ric rds sp endid y justi fied the cherished hopes of his parents by gra dua ting a with summ cum laud e and highest honors in chemistry.

There could be no further question a s to his future .

He ha d made a brilliant start in chemistry, and chemistry it was to be . When one considers the extent to which research in - America is carried toi day it comes a s a surprise to learn that even a s late a s 1 880 very few research investigators were to be found at any one of the colleges . At Harvard, for example , although the Erving Professorship of h Chemistry had been founded a s early a s 1 792 , Josia Parsons Cooke ( 1 82 7—94) wa s the first occupant of the chair to take any real interest in investigation s . These led to problems dealing with the combining proportions l of e ements to form compounds. Combining proportions of elements is glibly enough discussed by every high school boy, but Cooke could penetrate much below the surfa ce of things, and Cooke led his students on his own philosophic path . Needless to a dd, Richards was one of the enthusia stic followers. ’ Under Cooke s guidance Richards began an investi gation of the atomic Weight of oxygen . [S ee the article on Mendeléefi for the meaning of atomic weights . J Richards soon showed that the accepted atomic Weight for oxygen was too high . But more than that : the method of procedure had elements of novelty, and the extraordinary care taken to avoid errors in manipulation centred attention upon the work . The use of copper oxide in the determination of the a tomic weight of oxygen ma de it most desirable to be m a c ertain of the purity of this substance . Its so ewh t

62 THEODORE WILLIAM RICHARDS anomalous behavior led the young investigator to ques tion the a ccuracy of the accepted a tomic weight of a l a o copper, and by a c refu investig ti n of the ma tter, in the course of which he showed that the copper oxide which previous investigators had used contained nitrogen l a s an impurity, Richards came to the conc usion that the atomic weight of copper a s given by other investi f o gators wa s too high . The dif erences t be sure were l o fractions of one percent, but they were entire y bey nd x n all possibilities of e perinm tal error. These two researches were conducted before Richards o u l mm a l reached his twentieth year . Tw res ts i edi te y followed therefrom : the boy Richards ha d become a force to be reckoned with , and he had discovered just tha t particular department of the science for which he wa s best fitted . o In 1 888, at the age f twenty, Richards received his “ o a w of l had Ph . D . Bef re this , the gre test ish my ife - l begun to develop name y, an intense desire to know something more definite about the material and ener getic structure of the universe in which our lot is ca st. l Advancement in academic position, a though p rized because necessary in order that a normal life should be r possible , was subordinate to this great interest . At fi st perhaps my desire began a s a feeling little above mere l a o l curiosity, but by degrees I rea ized that g in in kn w edge would mean for humanity gain in power, which I thought for nd of primarily a s gain in power good . By instinct a l o of education , although not by forma connecti n, I was the S ociety of Friend s (or ! uakers) , in whose minds peace and goodwill to men were foremost ; and I dwelt little upon the sinister uses to which the increa sed power found by science could be put . It is not the fault of science if mankind is so little civilized a s to misuse its EMINENT CHE MIS TS OF OUR TIME

The atomic weights seem to be among the primal al mysteries of the universe . They are v ues which no man by ta king thought can change ; they seem to be l m independent of p ace and ti e . They are silent wit s nesses of the very beginnings of thing , and their half - r l hidden, half disclosed nume ical re ations , in connection with the undoubted similarities in chemical properties ’ of certain groups of elements, only increa se one s

curiosity concerning them. We see here clearly enough that even thus early in life a tomic weight determina tions to Richards were a means l and not an end . To get fina ly at fundamentals required in m la an the meanti e years of pa tient bor, ingenuity d skill .

Richards, of course , wa s not the pioneer in atomic m weight determinations . From the ti e of Dalton more

than one hundred years ago, many workers ha d pointed

out their significance . Prominent among these were l Avoga dro and Cannizzaro, two Ita ian scientists ; Ber l zelius, a S wede ; and S ta s a Be gian . The cla ssi fication of the elements ba sed on their atomic weights l ’ resulted in Mende éeff s Periodic La w, which in turn gave rrse to much further experimental work to explain apparent inconsistencies in the then a ccepted atomic l ’ l weights . Mende éeff s La w a so oflered food for much

reflection . Why could the weights of the elements be so arranged a s to exhibit at a glance the close chemical and physical rela tionship of many of them? Wa s this relation due to their origin from some parent substance? Reflections such a s these led Richards to the view that an answer to such a question could be obtained only by a much more car eful examina tion of properties of the elements, and among these , a tomic weight stood first

1 ecentl 1 1 -1 1 osel an lish sici R y ( 9 3 9 4) M y, Eng phy st , by stu dying - the high frequency spectra emitted by difi erent elements when used 64

EMINENT CHEMIS TS OF OUR TIME

a s m o atomic weights w resu ed with vig r. Some finish

ing touches which he gave to his copper work, in the course of which barium in the shape of one of its salts had o l to be used , p inted to the next ine of a tta ck . His results led him to the view that the atomic weight of barium wa s even less well known than that of copper had been . We see that the elements were never selected at m rando , but like most careful and thoughtful work, one x experiment le d to another, and ea ch succeeding e peri ment showed elabora te improvements over its prede s m a ce sor. Thus in this barium deter ina tion Rich rds first carefully chose a compound of the element which

could be ea sily prepared in the pure state , which could l be dried without decomposition , and which cou d be l l rea di y analysed . The compound once se ected, it was

now prepared in no less than seven different ways, and s o each one wa s found to have the sa nie compo iti n . S uch wa s the accura cy of the procedure that two of the results for the atomic weight of barium diflered bjbno more than - one six thousandth of an ounce , and these were shown l to vary marked y with the value then in vogue . The errors which other experimenters ha d fallen into with their barium determinations made it more than probable that those errors had been repeated with strontium , an element chemically very closely allied to n s barium . S uch , indeed, proved the ca se ; a d here , a before , new figures were given and the old errors ex plained . In this strontium experiment Richards set a record for exact methods of procedure which have never been surpa ssed, and which formed the ba sis for most of his r o su bsequent work on atomic weights . He e , al s , by the introduction of his bottling device, which gave a ssur

66 THEODORE WILLIAM RICHARDS

nated with any moisture , and the use of the nephelo mi me ter, which detected nute traces of suspended material, two errors were obviated which have perhaps ruined more previous investigations than any other two causes . The standards which Richards has set for his work are summed up in this remark of his Every sub stance must be a ssumed to be impure , every rea ction must be assumed to be incomplete , every mea surement must be a ssumed to contain error, until proof to the ” contrary can be obtained . S uch merit could not go unrewarded ; in 1 894 Rich o ards was promoted to an a ssistant pr fessorship . In ’ the following year the fame of Ostwald s school at

Leipzig, and the desire to become more proficient in physical chemistry, a science which he clearly foresa w he would use extensively, led him once again to Ger o m many, and here he remained f r a se ester. Not long after his return Richards married Miss Miriam S tuart

Thayer, the da ughter of Professor . H . Thayer, the ‘ J New Testanient scholar. They have a daughter and two sons .

Fame Richards had already attained, but there wa s o a danger in an ther direction . Aside from his sal ary,

Richards had nothing, and the sal ary wa s too small for a m l an with family . Pa ssionate y interested a s he wa s in resear ch , Richards realized only too clearly that it wa s m - - m l m ” - not a oney getting e p oy ent . Money get ting meant weary hours of labor, and such occupation l l cou d hard y be engaged in , side by side with research,

Without impairing either the one , or the other, or, wha t ’ l is worse , one s hea th . At this critical hour the father stepped in : My father a dvised me to devote myself to research . he supported this a dvice in a very 67 EMINENT CHEMIS TS OF OUR TIME

m car es presented the selves, and when he saw

l should prove necessary . The re ief from worry,

unnecessary . 6

desire to conduct investigation , and did all ” to encourage the work.

Encouraged in this way, Richards threw knew giving rise to another, he redetermined the l weights of such e ements a s zinc , ma gnesium , d cobalt, iron , silver, carbon, nitrogen, etc . , an ca se the figures he obtaine those obtained by other workers , many ma sters in the field . These differences be the necessary result of various inac — other men ha d fallen into , inaccuracies, due to a lack of knowledge THEODORE WILLIAM RICHARDS

’ been overwhelmingly in favor of his results . One s ” confidence in the work, writes Richards, cannot but be increa sed by the fact that in S pite of the many years which have pa ssed since some of the work wa s done [this wa s written in not one of these values ha s been shown to be seriously in error, and in every ca se the Harvard value ha s been a ccepted by the International Committee on Atomic Weights and by the world at large ” a s more accurate than previous work of others . Much of his earlier work appeared in the Proceedings

' e ca Acad e o Ar a nd cie ce of the Am ri n my f ts S n s, but

with the growth of the American Chemical S ociety, and

the consequ ent growth of its Jou rnal, many of the more o a recent pape rs have f und their way into this Jou rn l. Some have been reprinted by the Ca rnegie Ins titu tion

of Wa shington, an organisation which , by its financial

a ssistance , ha s ma de much of the work possible . A ’ volume embracing all of Richards papers up to 1 909 wa s

published in German under the title , Untersu chungen

tiber Atomgewichte . The extent of these researches ha s necessita ted the o a ssistance f many students . These flocked to Harvard l r l in arge numbe s . As ear y as 1 895 , when Richar ds wa s o r but 2 7, stu dents began t wo k under his direction, and their number ha s stea dily grown until to-day there is quite

a l l a m of h m . S om of m as itt e r y t e e the , such G . N . Lewis,

L . . r o Grinnel a and C a J Hende s n , Jones , B xter ushm n, are al amo s rea dy ng the very be t chemists of America . In 1 90 1 Richards was appointed to a full professorship l at Harvard . This came after his dec ina tion of an ofler o u o i fr m the a th rit es at the University of G6ttingen, m Ger any, which showed how far his fame even then ha d a ll l tr ve ed . Two years ater he wa s made chairman of the m 1 l l depart ent, and in 90 7, in fu fi ment of arrangements which had been entered into between Harvard and the 69

EMINENT CHEMIS TS OF OUR TIME

occa sion delivered an address The Funda mental

Properties of the Elements, which is one of the most

’ o m impressi n it ade on its hearers , Prof. Dixon s Opinion

story that is more entrancing than any fairy tale , because ’ a s we followed the flight of the lecturer s imagination, we knew that that flight wa s surely gu ided and controlled by a man who has measured and weighed the elements

l weights of the element, our o d European idea s of finality have been overthrown by Professor Richards and . his school, and we are at this moment seeing the

I look to the new world to redress the balance of the ” old . The following year Richards wa s appointed to the Erving Professorship of Chemistry and made Director of the Wolcott Gibbs Memorial Laboratory, a post which l he still ho ds .

This Wolcott Gibbs Laboratory, which was completed 1 1 in 9 3 , and which is devoted exclusively to research in

physical and inorganic chemistry, wa s named after one ’ a r m of H rvard s p ofessors of che istry . Its erection was ma de possible through the generosity of the late Pro fesso I r Morris Loeb , himself a pupil of Wolcott Gibbs . in he re t o . Until the Harvard experimental results were announced this atomic weight was repre sented as where as the experi ments showed the figure to be Evidently this diflerence of - two fifths of one percent means an increa se in val ue to the seller ’ of about on one million dollars worth of ore . 3 ix n f of D o is pro essor of c hemistry at th e University Manchester,

72

EMINENT CHEMIS TS OF OUR TIME

by his announcement that lea d obtained from ra dio a ctive minerals ha s a lower atomic weight than the lea d om o o obtained fr any ther s urce . A little reflection is needed to appreciate the full sig m s f nificance of this state ent . Until then no ca e o vari a tion in the atomic weight of an element had ever been l had S hown . Copper, si ver, iron, etc . , been obtained

from various ores in diflerent parts of the world , and many thousands of analyses ha d been run by many

hundreds of investigators everywhere , yet the a tomic

weight of each element remained a fixed number . l Wherever variations arose , these were invariab y traced to inaccura cies in experimentation ; and indeed a fixed tenet in the faith of every chemist became that the atomic l weights of the elements are una terable .

But ra dioactivity came to shake this faith , a s it ha s l shaken the faith of so many other scientific be iefs . Who wa s to settle such a question if not the ma ster of atomic Weight determinations? Ram say and S oddy in

England, and Fajans and Bredig in Germany, urged

Richards to undertake this work. Fajans sent his r u l am a ssistant, Max Lembert , with seve al val ab e s mes ‘ - of ra dio active ores containing lea d, to a ssist in the

research .

Ra dioactive ores from Ceylon , from Colora do , from

England, from Bohemia , from Norway, were carefully l r purified , and the a tomic weight of the ea d p esent deter mined with all the extra ordinary refinements that his o brother workers expected f Richards . The mean of many results gave the valu e of for the atomic weight

m ‘ of ra dioactive lead, a s co pared to for connnon — f ll lea d a dif erence sma enough , but al together beyond r m mos a any expe i ental error. The t amazing fe ture of n the whole situation wa s that , outside of this diflere ce in a tomic weight, and, therefore , density, the two varieties 74 THEODORE WILLIAM RICHAR DS

ll of lead were exactly the same in all respects, physica y ll and chemica y. Now Rutherford and Soddy had worked out a theory of ra dioa ctive disintegra tion by which, starting with a uranium, that element broke down in stages into

a s l a . number of other elements, the la st of which w e d From this hypothesis the theoretical atomic weight for lead could be deduced . This wa s found to be ’ — Richards experimental figure wa s a diflerence - f r then of one one hundredth, and a pe rcentage di fe ence - h o of of about one two thousandth . Never in t e hist ry scrence wa s there a more complete agreement between theory and fact. This ha d its award in the Nobel Prize which came to him in that year In 1 9 1 6 Richards wa s awarded the Franklin Medal of the Franklin Institu te , Phila r delphia , founded for the recognition of those worke s in physical science or technology, without regard to country, whose efiorts, in the opinion of the Institute , have done most to a dvance a knowledge of physical science or its

In addition to these awards, Richards ha s been the V recipient of many other honors . At various times differ — ent universities Yal e , Harvard, Cambridge , Oxford, a M nchester, Pra g, Christiania , Haverford, Pittsburgh , l — C ark and Berlin have granted him honorary degrees .

In 1 9 1 0 , the London Royal S ociety bestowed its Davy al him and 1 1 2 he lla Med upon , in 9 N received the Wi rd l Gibbs Meda of the American Chemical S ociety . He ha s been twice elected to the presidency of the Ameri c Ch m al 1 an e ic S ociety . In 1 9 7 he wa s elected President oi the American Associa tion for the Advancement of

S for t a a 1 1 a s cience h t ye r . Recently (May, 9 9) he w nominated for the presidency of the American Academy 75 EMINENT CHEMIS TS OF OUR TIME

of Arts and Sciences. He is a member of most of the s ifi o cient c organisati ns of Europe and America . ’ " is a reporter s description of the man and his Here “ surroundings : You find the oflices of the director on the second floor. Presently the door of the inner room and a l l opens you he r the conclusion of a itt e conference . There are some remarks about the determination ’ of ! and the elimination of that error, and then you are invited into the private apartment of Professor o l The dore Wil ia m Richards . The room is large and cheerful and the visitor is slightly surprised to note that it contains few tokens of th la a e bor tory work to which the building is dedicated . The eye catches at once an artistic portrait upon the wall of a chemist at work with his retorts and tubes, and inquiry secures the information tha t this is a photo gra ph of a Burne-Jones painting of [the la te] Lord

Raleigh , the Chancellor of Cambridge University [and o l a the ren wned physicist] . Above the mant e stands portrait of Micha el Faraday. The visitor expresses some surprise as he notes l - l a so that several wa ter co or drawings a dorn the room. Is there any rea son why such a room should be devoid of bea uty? a sks the Director, and later you learn that

a m l l . Two of the Prof . Rich rds hi se f ikes to sketch

~ water colors are the work of his father, one a scene at

Monhegan, the other a view of rocks, shale and waves at

Newport . l Meantime you have been studying the manhimse f. s m i m l a a He i of ed u height, sturdi y m de , with grey h ir, eyes that look keenly through his gla sses, and a genial a l m nner. His face is oval , the smile comes rea di y m he confesses to a feeling of humor, a s might be sur ise d from the twinkle that frequently is caught lurking in his — eyes and the movements are quick and definite . The 76

1 Feb . 2 0 , 9 1 6 .

N Herald (Boston) , ov. 2 1 , 1 9 1 5 .

d l n ulle t n 2 6 1 1 Harvar A um i B i , March , 9 3 .

1 7, 1 9 1 5 .

ul 1 1 1 . J y 4 , 9 6

Jam 3 : I 9 1 9

don) , 97, 1 2 0 1

JACOBUS HENRICUS VAN’T HOFF

l d followed by the elementary schoo , an this in turn by l ” the Hoogere Burgerschoo , where Henry achieved a

reputa tion for scholarship, for speculation and for day m n drea i g. ’ At the seconda ry school van t Hofi first received in

struction in chemistry, and a s with many another be d ginner, the excitement of cu tting an bending gla ss, l prepa ring, collecting and examining ga ses , and possib e o and explosions of all kinds, led the youngster t repeat om a extend many of the stunts at h e . The p rents

and friends were not exa ctly invited to these exhibitions , for the pra ctical young Du tchman declared that rich

fea sts should be paid for ! And paid for they were .

With the money collected, more appara tus wa s bought, m x r and more bo bing e peditions we e undertaken . l In 1 869 , at the age of 1 7, he ma tricu a ted at Leyden

University, with the following result : mathematics and l mechanics, excellent ; physica sciences, very good ;

history, civics and economics, good ; langua ges and — literature , fair ; dra wing, fair al together not a bad

But what was he to do now? His own ta stes led him

to entomology and to literature , neither of which seemed o practical en ugh , however, to the young Dutchman . After much family discu ssion it was decided that Henry

proceed immedia tely to the Delft Polyt echnic school, r there to equip himself a s an enginee . Once a success ful engineer and a local c elebrity it would be ea sy to re

turn to his first loves . w To Delft ent young Henry, then , and with a deter

mination to do or die , he at once plunged into the work o bef re him. For the next two years he knew little of c m i o pan onship and outside plea sures . The work for

81 EMINENT CHEMIS TS OF OUR TIME

” s l the greater part w a distinct y a grind . He g ra du 1 ated in 871 . In the meantime two things ha d happened which made him question the desirability of pursuing a technical o career. He had spent one f his vacations working in a

sugar factory, and found much of this work distinctly

monotonous . Wa s this to be his life Work? The o th ught made him shudder a little . l ’ And there was sti l another fa ctor . Oudeman s chem str l ha i y ectures d made a very deep impression on him. u O deman wa s an excellent specula tor in his su bject, and

a s we can now readily understand , such a man wa s l ’ ff precise y the kind of inspiration van t Ho needed .

After finishing his course at Delft, Henry pursua ded his parents to allow him to continue his stu dies at

Leyden, with the particular object of rounding out his m l ma the atical know edge . He had now quite decided m m m to beco e a che ist. What, then , ha d ma the atics o — m t do with it ma thematics , to prepare for a che ical car eer in the seventies? At this point one does not know whom to credit more with the instinct of prophecy :

his teacher Oudeman, or Henry himself . Of this we ’ are certain : that even at this early age van t Hoff wa s quite dissatisfied with the purely descriptive sta te of l l o chemical know edge . To be encyc opedic nly might be

bookwormish , but surely not scientific . r At the end of a year Leyden g ew monotonous . He m m had gained some mathe atics , but little che istry . To

Bonn , then, where reigned the illustrious Kekule, the

founde r of the theory of the benzene ring, and the

speculator of his day. “ — In Leyden everything wa s prose the surroundings, l ll ” the city, the peop e . In Bonn a wa s poetry . S o ’ o wrote van t Hoff many years later . Wa s this due t ’ Kekulé s influence? To some extent, no doubt. But

82

JACOBUS HENRICUS VAN’ T HOFF

Having finished a rather routine piece of work on the

synthesis of propionic acid , and having, by the end of u abo t two years, largely ou tlived his enthusia sm for ’ fi Bonn , van t Ho turned his wandering gaze toward Paris .

Outside of his wand erlus t, ju st what his object wa s in o g ing to Paris to study under Wurtz , is not clear. He m l l see s to have done itt e laboratory work there , but his

mind wa s full of speculations of all sorts, particularly s o l of one which wa t find expression short y. Il ’ éta it si tranquille qu on ne faisa it pa s grande a ttention 5 ” - lui. S uch wa s the opinion of his fellow students,

including Le Bel, through whose hea d were running ’ ’ idea s very similar to those of van t Hofi s ; yet not a word wa s interchanged between the two regarding their speculations ! ’ In the summer of 1 874, after a six months stay in ’ Paris, he returned to Utrecht to complete his doctor s m require ents . This degree he a ttained in December of the same year for another routin e research on cyanacetic

and malonic a cids , and yet four months before he ha d published an eleven-page pamphlet on The S tru ctu re

of the Atoms in S pace, which was to give him an inter national reputa tion ! ’ ’ — Van t Hoff s pra ctical common sense a na tionalistic — trait, one might a dd is nowhere seen to better advan m - tage . He ight have offered his eleven page pam phlet

for a disserta tion , but the probabilities of its a cceptance

would have been extremely small. Revolutionary idea s

are not, a s a rule , welcomed in disse rtations, and if m incorporated, ay be thrown out, with such comments “ ” “ ” ” a s a u a i l v g e , f nc fu , unscientific . To explain ca ses of isomerism which structural formu ’ la s failed to solve , van t Hofi introdu ced the idea tha t in such molecules the carbon a tom is a t the center of a te trahedran, with its four lines , representing its tetra 85 val ency, ra diating towards the four points of the tetra

hedran , all four e quidistinct from the central carbon ’ point . If at these ends we have four difierent atoms or l m groups, we can have at ea st two such co pounds, one

written in Dutch , which meant at best but a local a udi o ence , and it dealt with such n vel idea s that most of the scientists of his own land would have dismissed it a s a

piece of wild ima gina tion, particularly since its author l wa s entire y unknown . ’ To give it a wider circulation van t Hoff transla ted his work into French under the title of La Chimie d ans ’ L e a c a s mo a B sp e . This w all the re necess ry since Le el, — in November, 1 874 that is, some two months after ’ ’ van t Hofi s publication- read a pa per before the French m chemical society, containing uch the same views . It cannot be empha sised too strongly at this point that the two had come to practically the same conclusion quite n independently of o e another . As ha s happened before , m and since that period , the time wa s ripe for so e such

discovery .

Over a year pa ssed and nothing happened . Then

came from Johannes Wislicenus, already a mighty force om l m in organic chemistry, a letter which is a s c p i entary ’ to the writer s extra ordinary perpicacity a s it is of the “ ” al e ll t ent to the man a ddressed . Let m te you, he o writes, that your theoretical development [ f the s subject] ha s given me much sa ti faction . I see in it not only an exceptionally talented a ttempt a t explaining l hitherto insoluble problems , but something which wi l

- l become epoch making In a short time you wi l see , m o wn re I hope , the interest I take in your work by y l ” searches in the fie d . 86 in organic or JACOBUS HENRICUS VAN’ T HOFF

’ a Hofi l ll Dr . J . H . v n t Techno ogy wi give

m . private lessons in che istry, physics, etc . Address Mrs ” Kortebos, S poorstrat, C. The pupils came ever so slowly and time hung ever hi so heavily. T s was not an unmixed misfortune , for during his leisure hours further idea s in organic chem l ul istry began to cryst al ise in his he a d , with res ts which led to another fruitful volume not so very long after wards Views rega rding Orga nic Chemis try . — Things changed at length probably a s a direct result ’ o n of Wislicenus s letter. In 1 876 he wa s a pp i ted a ssistant at the Veterinary S chool in Utrecht , and in the following year he became lecturer at the University of

Amsterda m. ’ ’ In the meantime , in spite of Kolbe s criticism, van t ’ Hoff s views on the a toms in spa ce were finding welcome a o ac cept nce thr ughout Europe . His name wa s on the lips of scientific men everywhere , for his theories had given untold possibilities in the field of experimental mi che stry.

i o l Ima ina o His ntr ductory ecture , g ti n in S cience, was a ma sterly vindica tion of his own attitude towards the ’ subject, and incidentally a splendid answer to Kolbe s

t m . o a n cri icis The gist of it is c nt i ed in the conclusion , quoted from one of his favorite historians Buckle “ , a al a There is spiritu , poetic , and for aught we know a o a u and a l m m sp nt neo s unc used e e ent in the hu an mind , and a l and o which ever non, sudden y with ut warning, a l m and a or a gives us g i pse f ec st of the future , and z a s w ” urges us sei e truth it ere by anticipation . ‘to wo e a 1 8 8 w 2 6 l No nd r, then, th t in 7 , hen but years o d , ’ he became the fa culty s unanim ous choice for the chair c m s to w i sa d of he i try ( h ch, to relate , mineralogy and l at a geo ogy were first dded) . 89 EMINE NT CHE MIS TS OF OUR TIME

This was very quickly and very appropriately followed

’ in 1 896 he wa s called to Berlin , van t Hofi had be come mo l m the st renowned physica che ist of his day. The early days of his professorship gave him little leisure . Five lectures per week in organic chemistry, and one each in mineral ogy, crystallography, geology and olo o o pala ent gy, together with supervision of the lab rat ry, o which provided f r the instruction of gradua te students, — beginners in chemistry, and medical students all this

does not mean that his imagination wa s not a s a ctive as mu ever . It was during these years of ch routine , chiefly in the spare moments between supper and bedtime , that the idea s which found their expression in the E tud e d e — R i Dynamiqu e Chimiqu e the e volu tion Ch miqu e, a s it ll — ha s been ca ed were evolved . o 1 8 This great w rk appeared in 8 4 . Speaking to the ’ f German chemical society ten years later, van t Ho f told tha t audienc e that the origin of these studies wa s to

velocity of reactions became imperative . But the work

n i two distinct phases . At the begi n ng all scientific 90

’ Hofl s

Very well, JACOBUS HENRICUS VAN’ T HOFF

The German universities get the best brains their land can offer, and when better brains still are found beyond ll fi their border, the most a uring o ers are sent forth. Thus it happened that at a later date attra ctions were held out to Arrheniu s , and even our own Richards had l l om e o i lu difiicu ty in freeing himse f fr th G tt ngen c tches . - If only the Anglo S axons would follow suit here ! If only in leaving the whey of German university training they would be careful to reta in any cream ! What a joy it would be to see Manchester scrambling for a Noyes, or California for a S oddy ! ’ ’ It goes without saying that van t Hofi s migration met oll with criticism in H and . He wa s pictured a s un and a s a ra all l patriotic , being re dy to g b he cou d get, never be ing satisfied with wha t he ha d . Even the ’ o ff Dutch Punch did n t spar e him . Picturing van t Ho in conversa tion with a fish, the following carica tures were presented : ’ 1 — ( ) Dr. v t H : Fish fish in the sea , bring me a cap

Fish : Here it is . ’ 2 — m la ( ) Dr . v t H : Fish fish in the sea , bring e a bor

atory.

Fish : Here it is . ’ — fi sea me (3) Dr. v t H : Fish sh in the , bring an Order

Fish : Here it is . ’ t : — fi (4) Dr. v H Fish sh in the sea Fish : S till not enough? Adieu ! Writing to his friend Cohen from Charlottenburg (on ’ the outskirts of Berlin) on April 2 3 , 1 896 , van t Hoff says : This is quite a new life , and I look forward with

to u . a a tm la hope , the f ture Our p r ent here [Uh nd ll stra sse 39] is exce ent, and the situa tion all that can be — desired half within, and half without the town. A 95

EMINENT CHEMIS TS OF OUR TIME

i o h ghest hon r which they could bestow .

t lo for m ubercu sis a nu ber of years . The drea d disea se

not e ol lo hop to h d out much nger . On March 1 , 1 9 1 1 ,

- ’ When fame ha d come a plenty, van t Hofi was much attendance at these meetin gs ma de necessary wa s under

delivered an a ddress on La Force osmo tiqu e before the l S ocie te chimiqu e d e Pa ris, which probab y explains

” 1 Wie die Theorie der Losungen entstand .

h h ere in he fron row H elmh l d escribes t e event : T sat t t o tz, Ost

ho a s ha e ecom present, w se n me v b e included Landolt, JACOBUS HENRICUS VAN’T HOFF

’ fi s l l a In 1 898 van t Ho , a the trip e de eg te of the Univ. m d C m al S of Berlin, of the Acade y, an of the he ic ociety, undertook a trip to S tockholm to a ttend a Berzeliu s m m mm al celebration . To honor the e ory of the i ort ll S wedish chemist wa s doubtless his desire , but a sti greater incentive for this journey wa s the opportunity h it afiorded to be with his friend Arr enius . Three years la ter we find him on his way to the United S tates to a ttend the tenth anniversary of the founding of the University of Chicago (see a ddendum) ; and before the year is out he is to be found in London, in l the Royal Institution, holding forth in perfect Eng ish d a mo fi of w l syntax, with here an there di ca tion the vo e s which indicated that the langua ge wa s not his native

’ o and on his re rn home when disem World s Fair in Chicag , tu , men had sli ed and fallen down he sta irwa of he barking at Bre , pp t y t s is well known ru ture a blood essel on he head ship . He , a , p d v t , rl c u se d his fr m l of l which at the time nea y a death o oss b ood . l a a e d o of h lec ur oom m When Helmho tz ppe r at the t p t e t e r , E il Fischer ran and a ssist ed him down the steps to a seat in the front row of the hall ; the greate st physicist of the da y aided by the most mi of ha rio active organic ch e st t t pe d . “ ’ The obje ct in inviting Van t Hofi to lecture in Berlin at that o e e and hear him with the ossibilit of ca llin him o time, was t s p y g t Hi fame ha d alrea d s rea d and r that great university. s y p , the eal greatness of the man was even then beginning to be pretty fully

’ im ha d e er e n an Hofi her This was the first t e I v s e V t . T e e o s l a e e ei lo arose to speak a slight figur f carce y v rag h ght, with ng, a e e hair and wi ex emel modes me r th r coars , th an tr y t de anor. This, ’ as is well known to hose who kne an Hofi a l l l as t w V t t a l c ose y, w f m ik one o his ost str ing chara cteristics. Th e speaker at first seemed a little ner ous du e no do v , ubt in part to the character of the au dience he was acin and in o f g, part t the fact that he probably su spected the moti e in askin him o lec v g t ture in Berlin ju st at that time . ’ an t Ho ha d not rocee ded far wi e le h V fi p th th cture , w en any initial nervousness entirel disa e y pp ared, and his manner of presentation ” made a dee and lastin im re o p g p ssi n upon his audience . 99 EMINENT CHEMIS TS OF OUR TIME

” m s lif d tongue . The the e wa the e an labors of Ra oult, the eminent French physicist, who ha d but recently

died, and whose work wa s so indissolubly b ound with ’ o l tha t of van t Hoff . The c nc uding words of this lecture ’ apply a s much to van t Hoff a s to Raoult : Yet his ’ m (Ra oult s) character ay be read in his papers : a ctivity, pa tience , tena city to an e xtreme degree in pursuing an aim, having an eye a s much for detail a s for va ster and lu va ster horizens, abso te independence of mind , power of criticising or of a dmitting without pa ssion the views of others a s well a s his own, and of testing both with the same calm conviction that the last word must re st with experiment ; this is what we read in every page and wha t ” l l rl m the who e chemica wo d ay know. Two years later (in 1 90 3) he is in England once more this time in Manchester, in the city Where once reigned a John Dalton and a James Prescott Joule , of whom Manchester ought to be far prou der than sh e is (which is saying no more of Manchester than what might be l m said of ma ny another Eng ish or A erican city) . One hundred years ha d pa ssed since D alton ha d brought forward his Atomic Theory, and the university of his native city now celebrated the event in becoming fa shion . ’ What the university a uthorities thought of van t Hofi - may still be gauged to day by anyone who enters the r chemical labora tory of the unive sity . At its entrance is a tablet with this enscription : This stone was ’ f o Ma 1 0 la o . . a 2 th id by Profess r J H v n t Ho f, y, 9 3 , in ’ commemoration of the centenary of Da lton s Atomic ” Theory .

In the following year we find him in Munich, sent lthere to represent the chemical society at the celebration ’ ’ a r fi ,of B eye s seventieth birthday . Van t Ho ha d a very soft spot for the great Ba eyer, the ma ster of the chemistry of indigo and countless other organic substances, who,

I OO

EMINENT CHEMIS TS OF OUR TIME

1 s l l state of health . Hayfever wa a regu ar year y visitor, d lo ff 2 an in later years tubercu sis a dded to his a lictions . ’ ’ Van t Hofi s wife and four children , Johanna Francina 1 880 wh m r - o (b . ) ( o arried p ivat d cent Ul rich Behn in l o 1 882 wh A eida Jac ba (b . ) ( o ma rried Dr . Charles

W . S nyder, of Baltimore) , Ja cobus Hendricu s (b . 1 88 and Govery Jacob (b . 9) survive him.

Add end um

’ van t Hoj in America

On the occa sion of its tenth anniversary, the Uni versity of Chicago invited some distinguished foreign l o l r mo scho ars t a ttend its ce eb ation . A ng these wa s ’ ’ l o van t Hoff. Whi st on his j urney van t Hofi kept a brief diary which has since found its way into Ernest ’ Cohen s life of the great Dutch chemist . No sooner were the necessary arrangements com pleted with Nef, representing the University of Chicago , than further invitations began to pour in from the

America n Chemical S ociety, from Yal e , from Richards at Harvard, from Bancroft at Cornell, from Loeb at ’ l Wood s Ho e , etc .

With his wife by his side , and with a dose of sodium — cyanide in his pocket, to be used in ca se of a ccident a — ’ typical European custom van t Hofi set sail from 1 1 l Rotterdam on May 2 , 1 90 . Being a Dutch ce ebrity,

’ 1 onl worke un der hi h ension bu he Van t Hofi not y d g t , t i en on e n w seemed to live under h gh t si . Wh n o e sa him on the if rubb r and h s kin of li in o in street he moved a s on e , t i d v g w uld, ” - n he ner ous em. Prof. r . time , of necessity react u po t v syst Har y C n Jo es.

‘ ’ 2 5 off i ll known o hom con r c d bercu van t H , as s we [t w ?] t a te tu

lac ra ed his oa and l e tu bercle that the du st e t thr t ungs, and that th ” - he i Prof. bacillus t n began ts work. H. C . Jones.

1 0 2 JACOBUS HENRICUS VAN’ T HOFF

- the directors of the Holland Am erican Line set a side a stateroom for his use , and at table he sat with the captain on one side of him and the Dutch Consul to on o St . Paul the ther.

The voyage , a side from a day of rough weather, was, ol l a on on the wh e , a p e sant e . Professor Webster Wells, d o of Boston, an Dr . Pettij hn , of Chica go , whom he met l m a a a a o . on bo rd , proved gree b e co p ni ns During the spare moments when talk and play did not occupy him, ’ ’ a Hofi m l wi Lo r v n t busied hi se f th eb s wo k .

After landing in New York, where his pockets were - searched by a custom hou se ofiicial a s though he were a ’ H pickpocket ( l) , van t ofi registered at the S avoy Hotel . l o - Here troub es so n began . The taxi man proved ex s orbitant . The wash ba sin in hi room ha d unexpected i l a m o poss bi ities . The sh des si my cou ld not be m ved, o a s though defiant of Eur pean a uthority. And the i trunkr without which outdoor l fe wa s not to be thought l of, simp y would not show up . o m h In go d ti e things rig teu themselves somewha t. With the arrival of the trunk a brief stroll wa s under hi s r - taken . Everyt ng wa g eeted with Open mou thed a stonishment . Much wa s found that wa s beautiful ; much that wa s ugly ; but everywhere something very l m r a a s o distinctive y A e ic n w enc untered . Upon his m return , cards fro Professor Chandler, from his son - in law, Pellew, and from a reporter of the Ne w York

Tribu ne , together with an invitation to the Century Clu b , hi s l awaited him . T s wa evident y the beginning of

At luncheon there was a welcome introduction to ice — an ow l x mid water unkn n u ury in Europe . After the ’ Hofi day meal , Miss Maltby, of Barnar d , whom van t t o and had me in G ttingen , called on him and his wife , the trio started out on a stroll through Central Park and

1 0 3 EMINENT CHEMIS TS OF OUR TIME

l the Zoo, thence by bus to the g orious Hudson and ’ o d all to a a l o Grant s T mb , an fin y B rn rd and the gir s f r

The following day visits to Hale , to Chandler and to l ro l r Pellew were p anned . B ok yn p oved too complicated d al l lo a center, an H e cou d not be cated . However, a sight of Brooklyn Bridge partially repaid his disappoint u ment, for this stru cture aro sed much a dmiration from the artistic scientist . The homes of Chandler and - ” Pellew, with their well dressed ladies, were ea sier to find . ’ Not being expected in Chica go for some days , van t Hofl decided to visit some pla ces of interest in this l country . The first to be se ected wa s Baltimore , with m d oh o its Ira Re sen an J ns H pkins . The country, a s lm x m viewed from a Pul an , did not e cite him uch . One featu re wa s the large posters along the road , announcing ’ ” r C u l such items a s Bake s 5c igars , Genero s y Good ,

' or Omega Oil For S ore Feet, S tops Pain , For Head ” t l a ches , For Everything. That, a ea st, was America with a vengeance ! Pa ssing into Philadelphia over the Delaware recalled the story of the famous crossing and m oll the chain of dra atic events that f owed it. m mo own Baltimore wa s uch re after his heart . There wa s none of that breathless living so characteristic of the o l l mo l o Empire City . Here pe p e ived re on the sty e f mm m r amm the Rotterda ers and A ste d ers . met his old u l At the University he p pi , Har ry C . - l r Jones, whose open hearted a ughte , with his all ” “ ’ ” ’ right and first-rate and that s it won van t fi om l l wa s ow s of H o c p ete y . Here he sh n the fir t the m series of cla ssical researches on os otic pressure , so m l or inti ate y a ssociated with the name of M se . The greeting by President Remsen and the Fa culty in the S enate House wa s most cordial. Really 1 0 4

EMINENT CHEMIS TS OF OUR TIME

The first part of the celebration consisted of a reception ll tendered by Mr . Rockefe er. Here he ma de the ao

l addresses, and this du y ma de its appearance in S cience .

La ter on, Net took him to a ba seball game Which was to

’ im Hofl l the first t e , van t real y understood just what l baseball is . It would seem that whi e in Wa shington he had one day watched a steamer crowded with lively ll young girls depart for a baseba game . At that time our learned professor was of the Opinion that baseball was some sort of a dance ! In the evening the president tendered a dinner to his ’ H fi s a guests . Van t o wa se ted between M . Cambon,

the French Amba ssa dor, and Professor Goodwin, of ’ ‘ ’ o Harvard. Goodwin c nsidered van t Hoff s speech on — the occa sion American Ideal s the best, because ’ it was the shortest ! Rockefeller s presence made wine

or beer out of the question .

Following this came the general reception, which wa s most noteworthy for the immense crowd tha t had ’ ff gathered there . Van t Ho retired to a quiet corner

with Alexander S mith, an extraordinary tall col ” league . — — The following day June 1 8 began with the laying

of the founda tion stone . The hea t wa s terrific , and poor ’ - - van t Hoff fell quite a sleep during the long dra wn out

speeches .

Then came the awarding of degrees . All the honorary ‘ recipients were there , with the exception of the Russian , who had got his dates confused because of sticking too close to his Russian Calendar ! Fully one half of the students who received degrees s ll were girls . This wa an exce ent augury for the future ,

1 06 JACOBUS HENRICUS VAN’T HOFF

’ thought van t Hofi , and the thought he conveyed to an - a cquaintance sitting near by. This man explained the ’ University s point of view by saying that the a uthorities did not grea tly encourage the girl gra duates to seek po sitions, but did like to see these same girls marry rich m l en. Why? Because it wou d then be the duty of these girls to interest their rich husbands in the needs of s the University. Wa the man seriou s? ’ van t Hoff wa s among a few to receive the honorary o o L w degree of D ct r of a s . ’ 1 l At R M . came the a umni dinner , and van t Hofi wa s honored by being seated next to Rockefeller . Very little conversa tion wa s ca rried on with the oil ma gnate , beca use this gentleman seemed much too preoccupied ’ with his coming speech. When Rockefeller s turn did r come , he commenced with a sto y abou t a negro who wa s asked what he th ou ght of Jesus, to which the negro i ” replied, I have noth ng against Him . With this,

Rockefeller turned to the public and said, I have ” ’ nothing a gainst you . Van t Hoff does not tell us how l the millionaire further deve oped his speech . Again not a drop of al cohol on the table ! Again Rockefeller’ s influence ! The next four or five days were mainly occupied with — the prepara tion and deliveran ce of the lectu res since published and translated into English by Alexander

’ On the 2 4th of June van t Hoff departed for Cam bridge . At Boston he was met by Richards, who ha d provided for his comfort a s liberally as ha d Nef at

’ On the 2 6th , which wa s the day of Harvard s Com ’ mencement, van t H ofi wa s presented for his honorary ” degree a s the greatest living physical chemist, a a st tement which wa s received with much appla use . The 1 0 7

EMINENT CHEMIS TS OF OUR TIME

with an exceptionally fine record in mathematics, - physics and biology three subjects, in which his genius was to find splendid scope . For the next five years he pursu ed his studies at the

University of Upsal a, specializing in mathema tics, physics, and to some extent in chemistry. In this la st ’ subject he had Cleve for professor, and Cleve s lectures on organic chemistry gave Arrhenius food for thought .

The simplest formula for cane sugar , said Cleve , wa s

0 1211220 1 1 ; the strong probabilities were that the a ctual formula was a multiple of this , but there wa s no known ? way of finding out. Why not thought Arrhenius, to whom things unknowable presented an irresistible o l o fa scination . And he f rthwith set out to so ve the pr b lem of determining the molecula r weight of the sugar - by some electrical means, electricity being the key to l a l difficulties . ’ All Arrheniu s s attempts ended in failure . In the meantime , Raoult, th e professor a t Grenoble , France , ha d solved the mystery by his freezing-point determina o tions, but many days were to pass before the v ice from l Grenob e would reach Upsala . ’ Arrheniu s s attempts le d him to investigate the con ductivity of solutions (with respect to the electric cur o rent) , and by one of those happy strokes which ften ’ decide a man s fate or career, he chose dilute rather than concentrated solu tions . These experiments were carried out in Stockholm — during 1 881 84 , for Upsala offered few favorable fa cili o ties . Edlung, the pr fessor of physics, and the great authority on electricity, dissua ded Arrhenius from all chemical pursuits, possibly becau se he himself knew r k r v little chemist y . Arrhenius than ed him fo his a d ice and went his own way ; but Edlung undoubtedly gave

1 1 2 S VANTE ARRHENIUS him that foundation in the science of electricity without which his great discovery would have been impossible . Our young experimenter had not groped his way many miles before he formed the Opinion that in dilute solutions there was a complete dissociation . or cleavage of the molecules . l These were start ingly heterodox views . Did this young physicist assert that when common salt (the chemical name for which is sodium chloride) is dis solved in water, the salt dissociates into its components sodium and chlorine? Absurd ! S odium is a poisonous white metal , which violently atta cks water a s soon a s it - comes in contact with it ; chlorine is a yellow colored, sufiocating ga s, only too well known to the present l generation . But neither sodium, nor ch orine , nor anything like these two elements makes its appearance l l when sa t is disso ved in water. x

Answered Arrheniu s , meekly, but nevertheless with conviction, the chlorine and the sodium that are freed are not freed a s chlorine and sodium atoms , but as “ ” chl orine and sodium ions (borrowing a word coined by Faraday) , which are a toms (and sometimes groups of atoms) carrying powerful electric charges ; these electric charges powerfuny modify the properties of the elements .

What, then, does an electric current do when it passes through the solution? How, under these circumstances, do you explain the formation of hydrogen and chlorine at the two poles? ’ - That s simple , said ~ the twenty odd year old Swede . — The current does not dissociate the salt the water does that ; the electric current merely directs the path of the o th i ns, sending the sodium ions to the cathode , and e l l al ch orine ions to the anode . There the opposite e ectric charges neutralise one another and sodium and chlorine 1 1 3 two gases hydrogen and chlorine .

like most men beyond a certain age , unlearn with difii

l makes any other course impossib e . But at this time

there was no such necessity . Arrhenius wa s a candi ’ date for the doctor s degree , and without counting the

consequences, he incorporated many of these heteredox

( 1 ) conductibilité gal vamqu e d es solu tions a qu eous

lytes.

No wonder the professors were up in arms . What ’ right had a candida te for a doctor s degree to express

sense , might ha ve a dvised his colleague in S weden to

s Ph . D present a stereotype d re earch for the . and reserve — his more valuable work for another occa sion just as

1 1 4

EMINENT CHEMIS TS OF OUR TIME

l I came to my professor, C eve , whom I admire very much, and I said, I have a new theory of elec ’ u o mi o trical cond ctivity a s a cause f che cal reacti ns . ’ He said, This is very interesting, and then said, Goodbye ! He explained to me la ter [when Arrheniu s wa s presented with the Nobel prize] tha t he knew very

well that there are so many difierent theories formed,

and that they ar e all almost certain to be wrong, for after a short time they disappear ; and therefore by using the statistical manner of forming his idea s he concluded that my theory also would not exist ” long ’ Newlands Law of Octaves anticipated the Periodic m Law, but the ridicule that wa s heaped upon it by me bers of the English chemical society completely dis o d l c urage him . Not so Arrhenius . Having fai ed in his own country , he turned to foreign lands and wrote to — Clausius, Thomson, and again by a happy inspira tion l o Ostwald . The first two rep ied in a friendly t ne “ ; They were glad to make my acquaintance , but not ” much more . l m Ostwal d , however, was deep y i pressed . He had worked much on the chemical a ctivity of acids, and now, ’ l u a with the he p of Arrheni s s dissertation , he investig ted their electri cal a ctivity, and found that the two ran proportionally. ’ In later years , when Arrheniu s s theory had well nigh a ssumed the majesty of a law, Ostwald wa s fond of l ’ re ating how he got, on the same day, the S wede s dis on o d a s sertati , a t othache an a nice daughter . That w ” ’ too much for one day, was Arrheniu s s comment ; r s l the wo st wa the dissertation, for the others deve ope d m ” quite nor ally . wo ” Th The rst wa s the disserta tion . ! uite true . e l strugg e was but in its infancy.

1 1 6 S VANTE ARRHENIUS

- He had made , however, one all powerful adherent . In Ostwal d he found a man who is the expounder pa r a w wal excellence . What Huxley wa s to D r in, Ost d - became to Arrhenius ; and Ostwald is a first cla ss

scientist, a gifted writer and a fighter to be feared further unmistakable resemblances to the great Huxley “ o of the Victorian period . The battle of the i ns in the eighties and nineties waxed just a s hot a s the battles over the descent of man in the sixties and the

seventies . al b The an ogy may e carried a step further. In ’ l Darwin s days the batt e wa s no less severe , though such u choice spirits a s Malth s and Lyell had anticipated, ‘ ’ and to a certa in extent paved the way for Darwin s ’ o h ni l w rk . S o prior to Arr e u s s day the rumb ings of a storm were announced by Val son and Ra oult and Gay l d Cl Lussac and Wi liamson an ausius . Even Lord

Rayleigh, a s president of the British Association for the Advancement of S cience in 1 884 said : from the further study of electrolysis we may expect to gain

improved views a s to the nature of chemical rea ctions, and of the forces concerned in bringing them about . x r I cannot help thinking tha t the ne t g ea t a dvance , o of which we have already seen some foreshad wing, will m ” co e on this side .

What could be plainer? But Rayleigh , renowned o physicist that he wa s, spoke a s a v ice in the wilderness . m l u The u tit de could not and would not see . Ostwald came to see Arrhenius in S tockholm to talk ma r ll tte s over, and , incidenta y, to give a certain amount of prestige to the young doctor . In Upsala Ostwal d saw Cl wh eve o, taking up a water solu tion , said to the Riga o s pr fes or, And you also are a believer in these little sodium atoms swimming around? —to which Ostwald replied that he thought there wa s some truth in that 1 1 7 l a l l idea . C eve threw ook at me which clear y showed ’ that he didn t think much of my chemical knowledge . The university a uthorities granted Arrhenius the ’ doctor s degree, but their commendation non sine laud e appro ba teu r -sh0 wed that the dissertation had m a roused no great enthusia s in their brea sts . Arrhenius now decided to do what many an American prodigy ha s been forced to do : he decided to leave his l country and fight for recognition in foreign ands . He knew well enough that should he come back crowned by the approval of the great ma sters of Europe , the l former scofiers wou d become his loudest a dmirers . ’ So he ma de arrangements to a ccept Ostwald s hospitality in Riga and pursue further investigations at the poly l technic schoo there . - Both met later at the Na tu rforscher versa mmlung (similar to our Association for the Advancement of

S cience) in Magdeburg, with the object of proceeding

to Riga together after the conclu sion of tha t gathering. ’ But the illness of Arrheniu s s fa ther temporarily upset l n m all p ans, a d Arrhenius returned ho e . a S 1 8 and a a His f ther died in the pring of 8 5 , bout a year later Arrhenius set out for Riga , materially e sed by a stipend which he ha d received from the S wedish

Aca demy at the earnest solicitation of his teacher,

Ostwal d had set a side part of his own private labora ’ tory for Arrheniu s s u se , and though the two did not work together, they ha d ample Opportunity for intima te dis

cu ssion, and this led to a friendship which grows stronger

day by day.

After spending the winter, spring and summer with

Ostwald, Arrhenius, true to his underta king, left for

’ ’ -f upon van t Hofi s celebrated memoir on osmotic pres

1 1 8

EMINENT CHEMIS TS OF OUR TIME

- first foreign student of the physico chemical laboratory ’ h niu there . Here , a s in Riga , Arr e s s irresistible per o m sonality w on all hearts . Bef re any days he was

Dear Svante to the hea d of the pla ce , and on terms

— Van Deventer the three la st being, at that time , the

most active workers at the laboratory . If Ostwald did much for his Swedish protégé it is ’ Hofi l l but fair to say that van t did itt e less . The S tockholm authorities were never for a moment left in doubt a s to the Opinions these illustrious men ha d m r l for ed of Arrhenius . They we e direct y responsible ’ m for Arrhenius s ultimate appoint ent in S tockholm , despite the most strenuous objections from the local

’ Van t Hofi and Arrhenius were much together in later years. These two, together with their champion, Ost wald, formed a friendship which is rare even in scientific l o circ es . The tw great creators , supported by their great interpreter, made up a trio which led the way in o m l the nward march towards a ore rationa chemistry . ’ ’ In 1 91 0 , some months before van t Hoff s death,

Arrhenius paid him a visit in his Berlin home . Writing to Prof . Ernst Cohen, Arrhenius ha s this to say of what wa s to prove the la st occa sion on which he was to see ’ his friend : At first van t Hofl looked quite a pathetic

figure . His voice , always so musical, was now quite s hoarse . He wa forced to lie on the sofa for pretty rl l d nea y the who e ay. One morning S chmidt, of the

fellows think that one must be quite a lazy man to be

1 2 0 S VANTE ARRHENIUS l i w a y ng do n . But a s a matter of f ct I rea d constantly, and a a s s ’ m ke good progress a if I were sitting up . I comforted him with the remark tha t I ha d done more a re ding in bed than out of it . I noticed , however, that w m d and hen he a he soon got tired put his book aside . There is no question bu t that he must take the utmost care of himself not to allow matters to take a turn for the worse . m He acco panied me to the Stettin sta tion . We a l s llo dr nk three g asses of beer. This wa fo wed by a s return to hi goo d old self. The eyes began to twinkle , and l the ittle stories to flow. He wa s sorry that we could not remain together l — ’ onger. We are ge tting old quickly particularly I , ” ai s d he , sorrowfully .

From Amsterdam Arrhenius proceeded to Leipzig, to the university of which Ostwald had recently been ap pointed , and here he gave the finishing touches to his now — cla ssical paper on electrolytic dissociation a more fin ’ ished o u pr d ct than his doctor s dissertation . An extra ct was r fi st sent to S ir Oliver Lodge , and the paper appeared ’ ’ ll in its entirety, together with van t Hofi s equa y cele brated one on the analogy between the ga seous and the ol - diss ved state , in volume I of the newly created Zeit schri ft fiir physikalische Chemie . Rarely, if ever, in - the history of chemistry have two such epoch making papers been published side by side in the same number a s of cientific journal . Their publication in 1 887 did not lea d to immediate recognition, but it did lea d to fierce opposition on the part of many and thereby gave its authors much notor iet y, so that to every chemist and physicist the name of Arrhenius became familiar if only a s one a ssociated - with wild idea s of a post immessionistic school . The 1 890 British Associa tion meeting at Leeds gave rise to

I Z I EMINENT CHEMIS TS OF OUR TIME verbal cannon which in intensity ha s been equalled only by a former meeting of this organisationin which Huxley d l l l ' s an a bishop p ayed a ea ding rOe ( ee Ramsay) . In - Berlin the wise priva t docenten spoke learnedly of mma i ture thoughts ba sed on a quicksand foundation . or One two did hint that an idea or two wa s not wanting, but that only a Helmh oltz could have developed these . - Even in far ofi America Kahlenberg, of Wisconsin , the - lea ding anti ionist, concluded from his studies as late a s 1 90 0 1 that the dissociation theory wa s incorrect and o m l x l d o ed to ear y e tinction . But just as in Eng and the “ a gent for the firm of Ions had a pretty skilful rept e

sentative in the person of Ramsay, so here H . C. Jones ,

and la . . a . . o . . a o . ter T W Rich rds , A A N yes , W D B ncr ft, J r r L . R . Mo gan , and othe s who ha d imbibed their knowl l r edge from the Leipzig schoo , p oved able defenders . ” s In the meantime the wild army of Ionians, a l Horstmann ha d dubbed the ce ebrated tri o, were making o no end of noise thr oughout Eur pe . Leipzig became the

hea dquarters of the concern , and Ostwald the director . ’ e Ostwald s great Lehrbu ch d er Allgemeinen Chemi , his - Zeitschrift and his splendidly equipped physico chemical laboratory which the university authorities had S pecially l built for him, attrcated enthusia stic students from al ’ l D . o over the wor d who, with their Ph . s in their p cket, with their minds filled with their ionic disserta ’ “ ” tions and Ostwald s ionic lectures, and, what is far more to the point, with an understan ding, after several

years of earnest stu dy, of the true merits of the ca se , S a pre d the new gospel far and wide .

1 I ould be a dde d in e h ome of his t sh , ju stic to Kahlenberg, t at s cri cisms canno be li h l a s here are im er ti t g t y p s ed over. That t p a dmi fections in the theory Arrheniu s himself ha s b een the first to t, i in bu t t is hard to see how, when it has helped to explain so much

our ien i does not con m ea h. sc ce , t tain the germ of so e gr t trut

1 2 2

EMINENT CHEMIS TS OF OUR TIME

full professorship, a private labora tory, a compulsory lecture of once a week and perfect freedom the rest of nd m s ie the time , a an inco e quite ufi c nt for modest wants .

This he also refused . His countrymen , now quite con vinced that the world outside of Sweden was ready to ’ a ccla im him a s one of S weden s greatest sons, invited him to become Director of the Nobel Institute for l mi lm o l Physica Che stry in Stockho , a p st he still ho ds . Recently ( 1 91 9) he wa s elected vice-president of the

Nobel Board of Trustees . ’ s Arrheniu s training, a s we have seen, ha d a s much - d m r and more of physics an athema tics, a s chemist y .

His great teacher, Edlung, whose electrical problems le d l him to cosmogenic ones also , probab y fired Arrheniu s with a desire to invade the domain of a stronomy. At the S tockholm High S chool he gave a course of lectures m on cosmic physics, e bracing the heavens, earth and a tmosphere , which were publish ed in 1 90 1 in a volume o o l of over one th usand pa ges . This led him to pr b ems l l which were insolub e if the views then held were app ied . the conception of radiation pressure a pressure o o exerted by rays of light, f heat or of any other kind f ll u hi on ra dia tion when fa ing pon a surface . With t s c ’ ’ l l o ception in mind , Ke vin s and Helmho tz s the ry of

gains in probability ; for, by the introdu ction of ra di ” difi cult la how m ation pressure , the y of exp ining ger s transported from one pla net to another in a time throu gh

ol S olar systems, according to Arrhenius, are ev ved ll wl from nebula e by co ision of suns . Around ne y formed suns there circulate smaller celestial bodies which

satellites have provided themselves with a central crust, 1 2 4 which will partly be covered by water, they may, under o favorable conditi ns, harbor organic life , a s the earth ” and probably also Venus and Mars do . Arrhenius agrees with Helmholtz in denying the trans formation of inorganic atter to organic matter endowed “ ” “ l 1 1 with life . Helmho tz in 87 said : It seems to me a pe rfectly ju st procedure , if we , after the failure of all our a ttempts to produce organisms from lifeless matter, put the question , whether life has had a begin ning at all , or whether seeds have not been carried from one planet to another and have developed everywhere w il ” here they have fallen on fertile so .

This theory of panspermia , a s further developed by

Arrhenius, postulates that the seeds of life , floating in spa ce, occa sionally encounter planets , and, provided the o o l c nditi n on these planets is favorab e , these seeds, so l deposited , may b ossom further. If one remembers that the spores of many bacteria are about one millionth of an inch in dia meter, it is conceivable that the ra dia tion pressure of a sun would be umci n s e t to start them ofi into space .

A body moving at the average speed of a train, say - ‘ d thirty seven miles an hour , would take one hundred an

fifty years to go from the earth to Mars, and se venty thousand million years from the solar system to the Al nearest fixed star , pha Centa u ri. This seems a trifle l a m a al ! con ong , for ger to rem in ive However, the ception of radiation pressure a s a force reduces the time l to twenty days and nine thousand years respective y . ou sa Twenty days seems rea sona ble , but nine th nd years ! Here again other fa ctors must be taken into — consideration the intense cold , light, dryness , etc . , in o o mi interstellar spa ce . B th bi logy and che stry give ’ Arrheniu s s fertile mind a helping hand . 1 0 1 2 5 EMINENT CHEMIS TS OF OUR TIME

To begin with, spore s of bacteria have been kept for more than six months at two hundred degrees (centi l grade) below zero without appreciab e injury. Fu rther,

germs of S plenic fever, for example , have been shown by

Roux, of the famous Pa steur Institute in France , to — remain inta ct by means of light in a va cuum a condition somewhat comparable to that existing in interstellar space . Over sulphuric a cid , one of the most powerful

substances for absorbing moisture , spores have been lo l kept for twenty weeks without sing their vita ity. — And now for the climax, with the physico chemist to the forefront ! It is well kno wn that all chemical reactions are con era o m sid bly reduced at l w te peratures . A fall of ten degrees (centigra de) reduces the speed of a reaction in

the ra tio of five to two. The loss of vitality in inter stella r S pace at two hundred and twenty degrees below zero would be more than one hundred million times less — rapid than the loss at ten degrees which means that a journey of three million years thr ough S pace would be no more injuriou s than a single day of exposure to ter ” ’ restrial spring tempe rature . So what s a mere nine thousand years ! ’ In Arrhenius s books, Worlds in the Ma king, and l The Destiny of the S ta rs, these fa scina ting prob ems which fire the imagination are treated at length . It needs to be empha sised here that the meteoric theories of Kelvin , Helmholtz and Arrhenius, while giving us an idea as to the mode of transporta tion of germs, are irrelevant in so far a s origin goes, for in their a ttempt to explain the first sign of life on this planet they l presuppo se the existence of a germ elsewhere . Mere y to say that life ha s had no beginning is begging the — question . If we mu st have a hypothesis and this for — thinking men is too irresistible we might a s well be a s

1 2 6

EMINENT CHEMIS TS OF OUR TIME

l stance . Indeed , our know edge is so remarkably ex tensive that we cannot a s yet state the simplest vital manifesta tion in terms of science . l If, then, Arrhenius and a l others, have failed to solve the riddle a s to the origin of life , he ha s pra ctically solved the mystery of the transfer of life from one planet — hi l 1 to another w ch in itse f is a great triumph . If Arrhenius ha s thought on the subject of life in interstella r space , he ha s al so given attention to the possible better understanding of the living organism by - the application of his refined physico chemical methods o i s o o u a ntita t s t t. In hi tw bo ks , ! ive La w in Biological - Chemistry and Immuno Chemistry, his views are l e abora ted in a highly suggestive way. In the prefa ce to the fir st of these he says : The development of chemical science in the la st thirty years shows a stea dily increa sing tendency to elucida te the na ture and reactions of substances produced by living ” organisms . — Th e problem has been atta cked in two ways (a) by s the organic chemist, such a Fischer or Kossel, who has elucida ted the structure of the molecule , and (b) the - physico chemist, who investigates the nature of chemical processes . Biochemist s, says Arrhenius, have thus far o m l o a to 2 S h wn the se ves t be verse the second method . Biological chemistry cannot develop into a real science without the aid of the exa ct methods Offered by physical chemistry [quite true] . The aversion shown by

1 It should be a dde d that the several romantic touch es in Arrhe ’ nius s cosmic stu dies have ma de many scientists hesitate to accept

e . On he whole i d e e his views withou t r serve t , t o s s em as if ’ Arrhenius s repu tation will rest more on his th eory of electrolytic

2 a is no true an more . In merica ar ien This, by the w y, t y A , p t - a h siolo is is no rare wi e larly, the physico ch emist s p y g t t ; tn ss

ac e Loe L . . enderson D. D . van S l ke K. . alk etc. J qu s b, J H , y , G F , 1 2 8 S VANTE ARRHENIUS

- bio chemists [in the past] who ha ve in most cases a medical education [this is certainly not true either of America or England] to exa ct methods is ea sily under o m s st od . The physical che i ts have found that the

biochemical theories, which are still accepted in medical r l are an a ol l l ci c es, founded on bs ute y unre iable ba sis, and must be replaced by other notions agreeing with the ” fundamental laws of general chemistry . ’ Arrhenius s work in this field has been largely in - — immuno chemistry that which deals with the protective a l gents deve oped by a body when a toxin , or poison , is

injected into the system . The most celebrated attempt to explain the mechanism of this reaction -which since ’ von Berbing s immortal studies ha ve largely absorbed — the labors of many ba cteriologists is that known a s l - o the Ehr ich side cha in the ry, which, in its sim

plest terms , tells us that each toxic substance ha s two i — o groups attached to t a tox phore group , with “ w s o u ff and a a o hich it exert its pois no s e ects , . h pt

phore group , by means of which it att a ches itself to o o the recept r group which is f und in every cell , the heptaphore and the receptor just fitting o ll ’ one another . This combinati nof ce s in the body and ” the toxins leads to an extra production of receptor

groups , some of which are thrown off and appear in the l b ood stream . It is these which constitu te the anti — r bodies the protective bodies of the o ganism . Ehrlich was of the Opinion that the toxin and anti toxin neu tralise one another in much the same way tha t s a strong ba se neutrali es a strong acid . Arrheniu s , l however, combats this view, c aiming tha t the union is l of a much looser type , belonging to a c a ss known a s ” r om a h eversible reactions . He c p res it ra t er to the o l uni n of a wea k acid and a Weak ba se , and ha s app ied a well-known mathematical equa tion in chemical 1 2 9 EMINENT CHEMIS TS OF OUR TIME

dynamics which goes under the name of Guldberg and ’ a a A W age s La w of M ss ction.

It should , however, be a dded that experimenters are — - - not wanting and they are physico chemico ba cteri — ologists and not necessarily medical men who regard

o m a — in m sorpti n pheno en , so e such way, say, that animal charcoal removes colored impurities from vinegar

or a raw sugar solution .

By 1 90 9 , the 2 5th anniversary of the publication of the l l theory of e ectro ytic dissociation , all serious opposition

appeared, and when Ostwal d decided to honor the founder by dedicating a whole volume of the Zeitschrift r to him , many of the fo emost lea ders of chemical

mention Abegg, Bancroft (Cornell) , Le Blanc (Leipzig) ,

Bodenstein , LeChatelier (Paris) , Ciamician (Bologna ) ,

m . Dawson, van Deventer (A sterdam) , H Euler, H . C.

' Jones (John s Hopkins) , W . Ostwald , G . Tammann,

d . am an H . J H burger. The reaction of the theory of electrolytic dissociation on the chemists who witnessed its birth and watched

1 9 1 4, when Arrhenius was the recipient of the Faraday Medal of the English Chemical S ociety : With regard

to the theory of electrolytic dissocia tion , which ha s been

the subject of the discourse this evening, my experience ,

perhaps , is very much that of a good many others, and

to be discu ssed seriously, close upon twenty years ago, l l I confess I wa s among those who were strong y hosti e .

’ l o m But I felt, a s time went on, tha t I had to ay bef re y

1 30

6 . r of ol i n H r H . C . Jones : The Modern Theo y S ut o ( a per and

Brothers.

an n i 7 . S v te Arrhenius : Th eories of S olutio (Yale Univers ty Pre ss.

8 lexand mi Th . A er S mith : Introduction to Inorganic Che stry ( e

Century C0 . ie 9 . Julius S t glitz : The Elements of ! ualitative Analysis (Th e

Century Co. 1 0 an e o aldn H e . S v t Arrhenius : W rlds in the M g ( arp r and Brothers.

1 1 an e a nam’ . S v t Arrhenius : The Destinies of the S t rs (G . P. Put s

S ons.

1 2 an e i hemi . S v t Arrhenius : ! uantitative Laws in B ological C stry Bell and o on n (G . S ns, L do . - Immuno Chemistry (Macmillan Co.

1 33

HENRY MOISSAN

year 1 90 7 was a particularly sad one

o . t for the w rld of science . Wi hin a few ’ months of Moissan s death science lost

such intellectual giants a s Perkin , Men lé fi de e , Berthelot, the French chemist, Boltzmann , the

Austrian mathematical physicist, S ir Micha el Foster, he l l t Eng ish physio ogist, and Prof. Marshall Ward, the

English botanist. In the history of chemistry France occupies a proud position . One of her sons , Lavoisier of immortal mem ory, is the founder of the science of modern chemistry. ll Another, Bertho et, had much to do with developing a ’ m l om che ica n enclature . Berthollet s a ssistant and suc — cessor, Gay Lussac, has given us the celebrated law of w of gases kno n by his name . Duma s wa s a ma ster om at ic weight determinations . Berthelot was a minister of state , as well as a great authority on thermochemistry . - In S t Claire Deville we have one of the founders of m physical che istry. Pierre Curie had much to do with the discovery of ra dium ; Moissan rightft ta kes his place among such illus ou s l tri scho ars . He began his labors at a time when chemists had all but deserted the field of inorganic chemistry for the chemistry of the carbon compo unds . The cry had been raised that inorganic chemistry ha d e t ’ xhaus ed itself . Moissan s work soon convinced o l a m s pe p e th t the cry was a false one . Inorganic che i try h d d l s r a a , an sti l ha , rich fields for investigato s . Wh t was needed wa s a man of genius ; and such a man wa s found in the person of Moissan . I 3S EMINENT CHEMIS TS OF OUR TIME

itself, and not what the

1 36

m Ja es .

- than the druggist (self styl

schooling wa s necessary. “ Moissan quit his job in 1 872 and l at the Musée . He supported himse f a HENRY MOIS S AN

a all a spired . How po or fin nci y he was then can well be

imagined . Two years later Moissan exchanged Frémy for De r the a Pli hé ain, te cher of his friend cque . Dehérain ’ soon took notice of Moissan . The young man s leaning towards industrial chemistry was not discouraged by his al tea cher, but hopes were so held out that good work, coupled with the fulfilment of several university require m l ments, ight ead to an a ca demic position . ' An aca demic position wa s what Moissan wanted far

more than any industrial one , but until then the poor lad ha d thought any such goal entirely beyond his

l He now prepared a ctive y for his university degrees . For the time being much of the chemistry work had to — give place to the cla ssics and physics subjects which he

had neglected since his school days . In 1 874 , after ’ 1 several attempts , he obtained his ba chelor s degree ,

and in 1 877, his Licencié es S ciences. Even during these days of hardship life had its bright l spots . At the Museum he formed a c ose friendship

with Vesque , the botanist, and Etard , the chemist ; and during his army service at Lille in 1 876 he got to know m Beclere, S iredey and Walter, all three medical en. l s These six formed a very close circ e . Not only wa

science fostered among them, but literature and the arts were also cultivated . This intellectual group proved of immense value to

Moissan , whose irregular education needed polish to a a a a l round it out . He cquired t ste for p inting, scu pture , - ll historical studies and belles lettres, and incidenta y

1 To e a bachelor’ d a e of a i or a an g t s egree t the Univ rsity P r s, t n lish uni ersi — ar cularl London exha e examina E g v ty p ti y , ustiv final ions eoreti and ra o e o un al t , th cal p ctical , have t be pa ss d. It rs n t usu

1 39 of in

1 40

HENRY MOIS S AN

— chemically a ctive) element known had prevented its

isolation prior to this date .

S cheele himself , who wa s familiar with the a cid de

rived from fluorine , hydrofluoric a cid , began experiments on the la tter substance towards the close of the eighteenth m l century, but nothing came of the . Davy, the Eng ish

chemist, made an attempt in 1 81 3 to isolate fluorine by l pa ssing an e ectric current through hydrofluoric a cid .

The method, with modifications , wa s successfully used ’ by Moissan later on ; but in Davy s ca se the fluorine wa s no sooner liberated than it atta cked the water and

anything else that happened to be present, at the same s time being itself transformed into one of it compounds . - Gay Lussa c and Thenard were not more fortunate .

Knox, a S cotsman , spent three year s on this problem , and then ha d to go to Italy to recru it his health which wa s shattered by the unavoidable inh alation of the vapors r o of toxic ga ses . Louyet, another wo ker, died f their f m ’ ef ects . In 1 850 Fre y, one of Moissan s teachers , came near to success by his prepara tion of anhydrous - (that is, water free) hydrofluoric a cid . “ Moissan a tta cked the problem in 1 884 in the un ” l l o o certain h0 pe of at a st being ab e t is la te the element .

By the distillation of a mixture of arseniou s oxide , oil of l vitrio and fluorspar, he obtained a fluoride of arsenic w hich, when electrolysed, gave him ar senic and a ga s i wh ch immediately attacked the platinum electrode . ’ ’ Moissan now returned to Davy s and Premy s experi m ’ ents . Davy s hydrofluoric a cid alone would not do ’ a o bec use it c ntained water, and Frémy s anhydrous - variety ha d the drawback in that it was a non conductor l ’ of e ectricity . Moissan s success depended upon the fact tha t the a ddition of pota ssium a cid fluoride to the anhydrous hydrofluoric acid converted the latter into a conductor.

1 43

EMINENT CHEMIS TS OF OUR TIME

o variety int another.

ff m l m di erent for s of one e e ent, carbon . The ch emist gives the name allotropic to such difierent forms of l one e ement . Allotropic elements show the same com position , though the internal structure of the atoms are

when completely burned , all give carbon dioxide and

other forms of carbon by strongly heating it, but until ’ Moissan s time no one had succeeded in the reverse m l process . Before , however, this could be acco p ished , Moissan ha d to devise some scheme for getting much

led to his famous electric furnace . page) it consisted of two blocks of lime with central

1 46

EMINENT CHEMISTS OF OUR TIME

-f splendid material for newspaper gossip, and poor Mois o san, the most modest f men , found himself lionised by o all Paris . Diam nds, said the newspapers, could be

made so ea sily by Henri Moissan , that they would soon m a be ha d for the ere sking. What would the De Beers Company in S outh Africa do? ’ Many of Moissan s subsequent experiments were l l ma de with the he p of the e ectric furnace . The pre liminary Operations were first carried out at the works of the Edison Compa ny in Avenue Trudaine ; later the o ll w s ba sement f the co ege a equipped for this purpose . By means of the electric furna ce and the high heat

thereby afforded, Moissan liquefied and vola tilised such l metals a s copper, silver, platinum, go d , tin, iron , etc . Extensive researches on the combina tions of the ele

ments with carbon, boron and silicon to form carbides, l borides and silicides respective y, were carried out. Perhaps the most notable of these wa s the preparation l of cal cium carbide , which in the presence of water yie ds im l l the mrtant illuminating ga s, a cety ene . Moissan a so prepared silicon carbide , or carborundum, but he does not seem to have attached any importance to this dis covery. The method of preparation wa s al so a poor one . The discovery of carborundum is therefore very t ight fully a ssigned to Acheson, the American industrial l and chemist, who, working quite indepe ndent y, using a much more practical method (sand and coke) for its l preparation , arrived at the same result, and immediate y took out a patent for the process . The stu dy of carbides also led Moissa n to a theory of ’ the origin of petroleum. In brief, Moissans view was o that water, a cting on carbides, gave rise to vari us l m hydrocarbons which , when mixed, constitute petro eu .

With the electric furnace as with fluorine , Moissan embodied the results of his researches in book form 1 48 HENRY MOIS S AN

F under the title Le ou r Elec triqu e . In the preface to this work we find an admirable spirit a dmirably ex pressed : But what I cannot convey in the following pages is the keen plea sure which I ha ve experienced in

the pursuit of these discoveries . To plough a new furrow ; to have full scope to follow my own inclination ; to see on all sides new subjects of study bursting upon me ; that a wakens a true joy which only those can experience who have themselves ta sted the delights of ” research . r The wo k consists of four chapters . In the first, l various types of the e ectric furnace are discussed . In the second , the results of studies on the three varieties — of carbon the diamond, the graphite and amorphou s — carbon are recorded . Chapter three deal s with the preparation of several simme substa nces by means of the electri c furnace , and also describes researches on the preparation of chromium, mangan ese , molybdenum , tungsten, uranium, vana dium, zirconium, titanium , 1 silicon and al uminium . Chapter four de scribe s the preparation of various carbides, silicides and boride s, cal cium carbide receiving particular attention . s hi li In 1 90 4 Moissan, a c ef editor, pub shed the

Traité d e Chimie Minéraile, a comprehensive work (in m oll r five volumes) on inorganic che istry . His c aborato s numbered some of the most distinguished French

Le C l S a a . chemists, su ch as Gautier, hate ier, b tier, etc It ha s been pointed out tha t in 1 886 Moissan became professor of toxicology at the S chool of Pharma cy. It was not until thirteen years later that he succeeded to the l chair of mineral or inorganic chemistry . S trange y r enough, during all these years, though his esearch work

“ 1 o i is im es The feasability of preparing aluminium ( r, as t somet emon called, aluminum) on a large scale was first su ccessfully d can strafed by Hall, an Ama i , in 1 886 . 1 49

a ni to gr sp the sig ficance of facts and theories . On the

all a c y, or dr wn such sound conclusions from their work.

a but s an experim enter few have rivalled him . ” e me e J suis appliqu , wrote Moissan, a cultiver c m ’ ette chi ie minerale que l oa croyait épuisée , et je pense que mes trava ux , ainsi que le belle reserches des sa a l v nts ang ais, ont pu démontrer que cette science réserve encore bien des découvertes a ceux qui voudront ’ ’ ” l aimer et l é tudier avec tenacité . ’ Moissan s fame attra cted foreign stu dents, partien rl la y after his invention of the electric furnace , which opened up such vast possibilities in research at uni versiti es and industrial plants . In 1 899 , in addition to a m nu ber of French workers, Moissan had in his research la or l b atory two Ge rmans, one Austrian, one Eng ishman, m r one A e ica n and two Norwegians . Despite research which was often not quantitative in character, and usually planned on an industrial scale , Moissan insisted upon scrupulous cleanliness in the la or ra b a tory. A few drops of water on the labo tory o l fl or would make Moissan exclaim, ! ui a fait ce a? ’ He certainly gave the lie to Riess s remark that chem istry is the dirtiest part of physics !

M oissan spent his va cations travelling through pictur u esq e parts of Europe . But a s a representa tive of the to lu French Academy, his trips were often extended inc de r l him at cente s of earning. Thu s in 1 90 4 we find the

St . Louis Exposition in company with such distinguished

1 52 HENRY MOIS S AN

foreign delegates as Hugo de Vries, Ramsay, Arrhenius,

Ostwal d, etc . Moissan died in 1 90 7 from an a cute a ttack of appendi r l ha l o oitis . The e can be litt e question t t the inha ati n of toxic ga ses such a s flu orine and carbon monoxide - — the la tter a by product of the electric furnace shortened his life by a number of years . ” My life , said Moissan towards the close of his l — l career, ha s been of the simp est happy in my abor m ” atory and in my ho e . a ve le ll a G . B . Sh w, in his preface to O rru d , te s us th t f l ” industry is the most e fective check on gal antry . Tha t certainly helps to explain why research workers in l S cience are, almost without an exception , very happi y

’ On August 1 0 , 1 91 5 , Louis, Moissan s only son, died on the field of battle . The young man who , prior to the oll outbreak of the war, wa s an a ssistant at the c ege ma de famous by his father, the Ecole d e Pharma cie, left to this institution the capital sum of francs — for the founda tion of two prizes one for chemistry (prix

Moissan) and one for pharmacy (p rix Lugan) in memory, respectively, of his father and mother (née Lugan) .

References

’ a l Le a of P u be u, one Moissan s a ssistants, wrote a very comprehensive review of the life and labors of his ma l ’ ster A fred S tock, another of Moissan s stu u dents , is the a thor of an equally good obituary notice (2 ) ’ S ir William Ramsay s Moissan M emoria l Lec tu re (3) ’ is a rather poor S pecimen of the gifted Englishman s productions . ’ Moissan s researches on flu orine have been published in book form His work on the electric furnace (5) 1 53 EMINENT CHEMIS TS OF OUR TIME

devotes a chapter to his expe riments on the diamond . ’ S ir William Crooke s article on artificial gems in the

Encycl. Brita nnica (6) is well worth consulting.

a Le eau e r i e tin de la soci té chimi e 1 . P ul b : H n i Mo ssan. Bull é qu

d e France (Paris) , 3 , 1

che l B is n Gese lschaft ( erlin) , 40 , 5099 S a i c our o 3 . ir William R msay : Mo ssan Memorial Le ture . J nal f the hemic ocie t 1 01 C al S y , , 477

4. Henri Moissan : Le Fluor (Libraire Armand Colin, Paris. nr o o l 5 . He i M issan : Le F ur E ectriqu e (G . S teinheil, Paris.

6 . i 1 Encycl. Britann ca , 1 th ed.

1 54

MARIE S KLODOWS KA CURIE

” l “ E, says Anato e France , has two — ” geniuses Rodin and Madame Curie . m o The fore ost scientist f France , and the greatest woman scientist in the history of l ll mankind, she counts po itica y less than many a man

fit for the lunatic a sylum . And a s if to encourage that conception of woman to which so many men cling l tenacious y, the French Aca demy, numbering among its

“ members the élite of French intellect, decide that

woman , be she ever so much a genius , cannot be a d

mitted into their sanctum . If further proof were

needed that intellect often runs counter to freedom, and that scientists who work so strenuously for an en largement of their scientific horizon often belong to

the most reactionary group in politics, the ca se of

Ma dame Curie affords an excellent example . Within the spa ce of ten short years this woman has created a new science , ra dioa ctivity, and this has opened up more fertile chemical soil than any other u s discovery in the history of science . It ha s given the ’ first clear insight into the chemist s promised land , the l nature and possible structure of the atom, and ho ds possibilities which could hardly have been hoped for from the a ccumulated labors of scientists during the l o o t a st hundred years . In speed of pr gress ra di a ctivi y is to the science which has gone before wha t the a ero l o p ane is to the t rtoise .

This momentous discovery belongs to Ma dame Curie . a o TObe sure , the w y wa s paved for her by many ; t be of sure , her husband wa s a good helpma te ; but in spite I SS l where all others fai ed , and to her belongs the reward .

l very greatest scientistsof a l times .

klo d fiski — father , Dr . S dowski squa o to give it the

there to share the misery ; and w ere it not that from

’ the girl s love for science ma de the

Dr . S klodowski wa s her sole tea cher.

1 56

a m e st side section of the town , in a s all ba ck room,

l o o l om strugg e became param unt . Yet to c nc ude fr this ,

l ma de the woman , is a s near the truth a s to conc u de ’ ofi r al tha t its absence ma de Ramsay or van t H . Mate i

the world ha s been ma de mu ch the wiser . In those days the head of the physical science depart

1 58 MARIE S KLODOWS KA CURIE

tion of her work, which developed from wa shing bottles

to setting up apparatus . Henri Poincare, the great m mathe atical philosopher, and a brother of the late president of France , was another one upon whom this m young girl had ma de an i pression . They a cquainted m l o L the se ves with her hist ry . ippmann got into touch

with her father in Warsaw. The result was tha t Marie ’ wa s put into the hands of Pierre Curie , one of Lippmann s

most promising pupils .

Given a scholar, an immessionable young man, one who ha d met few people and who had become absorbed o in his w rk, and a bright girl, with a personality, and a keen interest in the same type of work ; given further that the man and the woman see one another daily for

the greater part of the day, and the possible outcome m ight have been forseen . What a grand thing it would be to unite our lives and work together for the ” good of science and humanity, runs one letter from o Pierre . F r the good of science and humanity

smacks of too mu ch al truism in a marriage proposal, d but innocent Pierre Curie meant well , an Miss S klodof o d ska understo d and sympathised an accepted . ’ S o in 1 895 the two were married, both poor in life s necessities , bu t rich in sympathy toward, and under e standing of one another. Curie continued his t searches on the construction and use of electrometers and condensers , and Mme . Curie a ssisted in this, and

also prepared herself for her degree . Within three years she gained her licenciée es S ciences ma théma tiqu e e t e ce i hrl es S ci n s phys qu es, and unlike Pa steur or E ich,

. me . who ma de a poor immession on the examiners , M x l Curie passed her e amination in brilliant sty e . Here again no moral should be drawn ; not all poor students m become Pa steurs, nor do all senior wranglers beco e

Curies .

1 59 is necessary .

negative pole , to which he gave the name cathode ” a . l . m d o w r ys Much ater J J . Tho son an thers sho ed that these rays were negative particles of electricity, ” or electrons, each electron weighing a bout one two

l gla ss vessel. The app ication to medicine of these - X rays wa s immediately recognised when it wa s noticed that they could penetrate flesh. ROntgen made the further observation that the X-rays act on photographic l p ates in their neighborhood .

One year later Becquerel, studying the general be havior of phosph ore scent bodies, ha d occa sion to ex these substances gave ofl rays which resembled the - o a l X rays in their affect on a phot gr phic p ate . He

near it.

1 60

t s men s wa always at hand .

The fra ction containing the common element bismuth showed the presence of a powerful ra dioactive sub and ’ named polonium, in honor of Madame Curie s

Further examination showed that the fraction con taining the element barium had even more powerful

ra dioactive properties, and by some of the most ex

l our science , recalling those of We sbach on the rare

earths, Ma dame Curie succeeded in separating a salt l m of barium from the salt of the new e e ent, to which she a l m gave the name of radium. Ra dium s an e e ent ha d

o l h l m 1 9 1 0 , when our her ine so ved t is prob e , but even the salt of ra dium showed itself to be two and a half

The radiations from ra dium were shown to ionise air, l to act on photographic p ates , to change the color of ol minerals and gems, to immrt a deep vi et color to the l gla ss tube which contained the ra dium sa t, to convert m ordinary oxygen to its more a ctive for , ozone , to pro duce tra ces of peroxide of hydrogen in the presence of mi u a m and ll ll Of water, to destroy n te org nis s , to ki ce s

skins and produce sores .

1 62 MARIE S KL ODOWS KA CURIE

l l m That radium is real y a new e e ent , and not some compound or mixture , is proved beyond doubt by the - very distinctive spectrum it gives . The wave lengths of the lines of this S pectrum are mathematically con nected with the spectra given by the elements b arium , m calcium and strontiu , and this relationship , together m with its S imilarity in che ical property to b arium , places radium in the cla ss of what are known a s a lkaline ea rth l meta s . The subsequent development of ra dioactivity ha s been ma wo a due to the labors of ny rkers in m ny countries . a am C and a ma Besides M d e urie her. husb nd, one y i mention their a ssistant Deb enne , Rutherford, Soddy d Bol oo m r and Ramsay in England, an tw d in A e ica . The value of this work may be gauged by the recog l nition these men have received . Rutherford ha s la te y om Ca s o ssor su cceeded J . J . Th son to the vendi h Pr fe m ship of Physics at Ca bridge , and Soddy ha s ma de rapid jumps from a lectur eship at Gla sgow University d to a professorship at Edinburgh , an within the la st few - m s r x o months , to a newly created chair of che i t y at O f rd . Boltwood ha s been ma de director of the chemical depart l ment at Yale University. The reputation of a l three r rests prima rily upon their resea ches in radioactivity. a A brief general a ccount m y now be given .

Radium gives ofi three types of rays, and these are

distinguished by the Greek letters a , 6, and 7 . The - a rays have been shown to be atoms of helium which are thrown off with a velocity of thirty thousand kilometers l a per second , or abou t one tenth tha t of ight . Th t helium is one of the produ cts obtained from ra dium has been shown by the work of Ramsay and S oddy (which see ) . - Unlike the a particles , which are charged with positive - l a l l electricity, the g partic es are neg tive y charged e ec 1 63

ra dium residue !

1 66 MARE S KLODOWS KA CURE

The process ha s been traced experimentally through

quite a number Of sta ges, but the peculiar feature of this disintegration process is that at ea ch step an atom of l is he ium set free . Why just helium? This is one of al l sever puzz es that awaits solution . Coming to more immediate and practical considera o ti ns , the application of radium in the treatment of a m of nu ber diseases, particularly those due to growths, u a s a r s ch c nce , ha s come to the foreground . Definite

cures have not yet been established, but many well o l end wed estab ishments , such a s the Crocker Research

Institute of New York, and the Ra dium Institute in l Paris, are devoting much time and skill to experimenta o c nditions . S uch then is this fa scinating study which ha s led us on our j ourney from the minu test particles which the eye can see (minute suspensions) to particles which the eye can see only with th e help of the mo st powerful - ultra miscroscope (colloids) , and then on to molecules which are formed when a substance like sugar is dis solved in water, and which never have been seen by mortal eye , and still further to the atoms formed when molecules break up , and yet still further to the electrons which result from the breaking up of atoms, and which - in size are one two thousandth that of the lightest atom m l known . If a strono y sees the infinite y big in such

distances a s those from the earth to the nearest fixed star, chemistry and physics approach the infinitely small in f m l comparing the size o an with that of the e ectron . ’ Ma dame Curie s pioneer work on radium la sted from 1 0 2 — om o 1 898 to 9 s e f ur years . In 1 90 3 the results of her work were presented to the Paris fa culty in the form r o o Th l of a thesis fo the d ct r of science degree . e tit e page rea ds , These Présentée a la Fa culté d es S ciences 1 67 EMINENT CHEMIS TS OF OUR TIME

physiqu es.

dissociation .

’ ni s s l bution, with Arrhe u a s a c ose second ; many of the

sorceress ; now she was a wizard in science .

tion of Lord Kelvin , and

MARE SKLODOWS KA CURE

wa s chatting in the laboratory [in London] one day

about the year 1 900 , when a stranger entered , a Mon l m had w l and sieur Becquere , who I kno n previous y, "he announced that he had with him a new element, ra ’ dium. He produced a little pa cket containing a sub

stance which he said wa s radium bromide . He sub jecte d the substance to a chemical test for our informa tion . Someone a sked him who discovered it . He l ’ rep ied , Madame Curie of Paris . This was the first

time I ha d heard of Ma dame Curie .

Within the next few months the Nobel Prize , the highest mark of distinction that can come to any scientist, l was divided between the Curies and Becquere . In the following year Ma dame Curie was appointed

Chef d e Tra vaux, or chief of the laboratory, in the department at the Sorbonne that wa s especially created

for her husband . l For two more years were M . and Mme . Curie to ive

together, loving and working, and living a s happily a s

any man and woman ever have lived . Then one day,

early in 1 90 6 , after ha ving lunched and chatted with his

intimate friend , Professor Perrin , Pierre Curie left him and crossed the Rue Dauphine in Paris whilst that ” thoroughfare wa s, appar ently, crowded with vehicles . He wa s knocked over by one of these vehicles and

insta ntly killed . This terrible accident well nigh resulted in Ma dame ’ Curie s death . For months her state was such that her l l friends gave up all hope of any recovery . S ow y she l o l and found herse f again . Her tw chi dren her sci

l . ence ha d saved her, and to these she consecrated her ife

d Mme . Langevin , their friend , has this to say of M . an ’ Curie s marriage : Cette époqu e marqu e un change ’ ment profond dans son [Pierre Curie s] existence par Il son mariage avee Mme . Marie S klodowska . est 1 69

MARE S KLODOWS KA CURE

Mme . Curie , together with her two children and old Dr. ’ Curie (her late husband s father) lives . ” In outward appearance , writes Mrs . Cunningham,

she is tall, just above middle height, broa d shouldered l and graceful . Her brow is S p endid ; her lovely grey l eye s fu l of sadness . Her ma ss of fair hair is wavy, ’ derewski s a a like Pa hair . There is suggestion of squ re ness in her face , very firm mouth and chin , but there is l gent eness withal . Her voice is musical , and to her intimate friends she can sometimes be persuaded to recite poetry, which she does, using the tones of her h voice with charming inflections . In manner S e is perfectly simple and unaffected . Like so many Polish women , she has a magnetic personality and an intense love of beauty, for bea uty in nature and art . Seeing her one May morning in the cla ssic hall of the Sorbonne , with her long trailing diaphanous draperies, she sug gested strongly to me a similarity to the old Greek sta tue of B emetes, the goddess whose face suggests strength and sa dness . I would that Rodin thought so ” too and gave expression to that thought . This description probably reflects a somewhat over abundant enthusia sm . At any rate , years of grief and - o m ill health have left their impress up n M e . Curie . A representative of the Figa ro speaks with something nearer the truth when he describes her a s like some thing washed out, the color gone , the fire extinguished . One is tempted to say her eyes are grey until a closer inspection brings out a trace of blue ; but in the end the hue of these frigid orbs relapses into a sheer ” neutrality . m l Her co p exion, we are told , is neither pale , nor red , nor s allow, but faded ; her hair is neither a uburn, nor brown , nor gre y, but neutral . The prominence of m the cheek bones bespeaks Polish origin . Mada e

I 73 u l l k e th er C rie ooks i e a person in ne d of e sun, 9. p son l ” who wou d benefit from more fresh air. o d Her voice is l w an free from theatricality. Her manner is decidedly cold ; in fact her coldness suggests — the pa ssionless S pirit of pure science a view hardly supported by the few who are her intimates . l m As a ecturer M e . Curie is unsurpa ssed in lucidity of expression , and from the tricks of political oratory she is quite free . Her voice is hardly ever raised beyond the regul ated academic level, and her arms , which are long, l l s ender and gracefu , are rarely called into play, even m when e pha sis is sought . Her a ccent betrays her

Polish origin , but she expresses every idea in perfectly idiomatic French . ’ In 1 90 7, one year after her husband s tragic death , and after she ha d succeeded to the chair which her l l husband had he d at the Sorbonne , Mme . Curie de ivered a discourse on polonium , which is still remembered even - i in fashionable Paris circles of to day. Lord Kelvin , S r William Ramsay and Sir Oliver Lodge ma de a special trip from London to hear this great little woman . Even the unfortuna te King Carlos of Portugal was a ttracted . “ n lli wa s President a d Mrs . Pa eres headed a crowd which l representa tive of the wealth, fa shion and cosmopo itan o ism of the gay capital of France . On the str ke of three - l an insignificant little black robed woman steppe d in , and the va st and brilliant throng rose with a thrill of homage la and respect . The next moment a roar of app use burst l d forth . The timid little figure was visib y distressed , a n raised a trembling hand in mute appeal . Then you could ” have heard a pin drop , and she began to S peak.

Mme . Cu rie may be the great scientist, but she has many of the traits of feminity and motherhood which

” ll o e ei h ta , ju st ab ve middl h g t. I 74

EMINENT CHEMIS TS OF OUR TIME

- the old new country whose chief glory is that rt has k given birth to Marie S klodows a Curie .

References Part of the material for this biography has been ’ o obtained from private s urces . Miss Cunningham s a ccount ( 1 ) ha s good personal touches but is quite l ll worth ess scientifica y. The same may be said of the l m l artic es by E i y Crawford (2 ) and W . G . Fitzgeral d S ome sidelights on Madame Curie are given by Paul

Lan gevin (4) in his a ccount of Pierre Curie . For a lay man desirous oi an intelligent description of ra dium and ’ its significance , S oddy s Ma tter and Energy (5) stands l a one in the English language . A more technical ac ’ count may be found ia Ru therford s a rticle prepared for the ri th e dition of the B ritanica The beginner in inorganic chemistry can hardly do better than consult ’ S mith s Introduction The more comprehensive works of Soddy Rutherford and Curie ( 1 0 ) are the standard reference books .

arian adame e kl do ka and he 1 . M Cunningham : M Curi (S o ws ) t

or f Ra a he e Pres London . S t y o dium (S aint C t rin s, ) mil rawford Th ies a me The orld To-d a 6 2 . E y C : e Cut t Ho . W y, , 490 “ ’ i erald a e ie d he ork Har er s 3 . W. G . F tzg : M dam Cur an r W . p 42 Bazaar, , 2 33 an s h- Paul L gevin: Piere Curie . La Re vu e du Moi , 2 , 5 I a e ner H r ol and U F. S oddy : M tt r and E gy ( en y H t e h a i Enc l Bri ica 22 G Ern st Rut erford : Radio ctiv ty [ yc . tann , , 794

xan er mi n d c ion o nor ani hemi r en ur 7 . Ale d S th : I tro u t t I g c C st y (C t y w Co.

dd The h mi r f he Radi - l men Lon mans 8 . F . S o y : C e st y o t o E e ts ( g , d Co Green, an . u herford : Radioacti e S u nces and heir adia 9 . Ernest R t v bsta t R i mbrid e Uni ersi e ss t ons (Ca g v ty Pr . e ie rai é de adioacti i é ier- illars Im 1 0 . Mari Cur : T t R v t (Gauth V ,

EMINENT CHEMIS TS OF OUR TIME

Indeed, at fifteen , the boy had quite made up his mind ’ m a act . a m a who to beco e n or To his f ther s re onstr nces, wa l m tched these deve opments with uch perturba tion, Victor replied : Never can I become anything else never ! I feel it . In any other profession I shall remain - - ” a good for nothing the rest of my life .

However, in the meantime the lad continued his a ca demic studies, and in the S pring of 1 865 he pa ssed a his matriculation examination (Abitu rientenex men) . HOping against hOpe tha t possibly the university at ’ mosphere would tend to direct Victor s thoughts in a nother direction, the family persua ded the youth to proceed to Heidelberg, there to attend some lectures in the company of his elder brother. What the incessant arguments of the parents and friends had failed to do , the chemical lectures of one of the professors easily accomplished . In Bunsen the young man encountered one of those rare minds who can see and demonstrate the beauty and poetry of anything they happen to be m engaged in . From the lips of Bunsen che istry issued forth as a song to nature , and as a song to nature Meyer

Small, and quite childish in appearance , the seventeen - year old boy enrolled a s a student of the university . ’ During the first semest er he attended Hofmann s lec h tures in Berlin, so a s to be near his parents . After t a t ll he took up his abod e in Heidelberg . Here he fo owed ’ ’ Kirchhoff s lectures on physics , Kopp s on theoretical ’ ’ chemistry, Helmholtz s on physiology, Erlenmeyer s ’ on organic chemistry, and Bunsen s on general chem — istry truly a s illustrious a band of scholars as could be found anywhere . Under the same roof there lived Julius Bernstein (the ’ m son of the family s Old friend) , who was at that ti e one ’ of Helmholtz s a ssistants, and who, as professor of 1 78 VICTOR MEYER

physiology at Halle , has since risen to be one of Ger ’ l r many s great physio ogists . B ernstein and the Meye s fratem ized much together. To this trio there wa s — later added a fourth Paul du Bois Reymond, then — priva t d ocent in mathematics . ’ Meyer s work at the university was brilliant in the l M extreme : he headed the ists in every course . In ay,

1 867 , when but nineteen years old , he received the ’ — doctor s degree summa cum la ud e which is given on but rare occa sions . Bunsen immedia tely appointed him

to an a ssistantship , and here he chiefly busied himself with analyses of various spring waters by methods initi ated or improved by Bunsen and his pupils .

In a ddition to his work at the laboratory, Meyer wa s ’ much in demand a s a coach for the doctor s examination . Yet he found time to cultivate his artistic ta stes in many

ways . From his earliest days he played the violin ; o now he began to take less ns in piano playing. The

cla ssics he a ssiduously cultivated, and never missed an opportunity of attending the more notable performances l at Mannheim . His week ends were usual y spent

wandering near Heidelberg . Julius Bernstein, who

often accompanied him on these excursions, tells of a pretty little incident that occurred to them on one occa ’ sion : Towards evening, tired and weary after a day s ll tramping, we entered a wine ce ar, and there sat down

at one of the tables . A young pea sant who happened to c ome in came up to us and a sked permission to sit at a l our t b e . As we were chatting with him he fixed his

eyes on Victor, stared at him for some time , and then

exclaimed , S ee here , never in my life have I seen su ch om llo ’ a hands e fe w a s you are . Just quite in this way

Victor wa s hardly ever a ddresse d again , but it is a fa ct that the la dies were all more or less in love with ” him.

I 7O EMINENT CHEMIS TS OF OUR TIME

In the late sixties Ba eyer had already e stablished a reputa tion such a s to attract students from all parts of ’ the world , and it wa s to Ba eyer s laboratory in Berlin (at the Gewerbea kad emie) that Meyer proceeded in 1 868 . And what a busy and profitable pla ce this proved to be ! Baeyer himself ha d already begun his classic researches on indigo blue . Graebe and Liebermann had — just produced alizarin artificially the first instance of the l - l synthesis of a p ant co oring matter. S . Mat a sse ,

. afie . L and . . v n all l B J , E udwig W A a Dorp were he ping to make the laboratory famous . The young Meyer ma de more than a favorable im ’ pression, according to Liebermann s testimony : Mey ’ l l e r s remarkab e abi ity could hardly pa ss unnoticed . His congenial personality added but to the esteem in l which he wa s he d . He seemed to have rea d every m m l thing, and his me ory wa s si p y phenomenal . Many obscure reference s that at tha t time were rather difiicult to locate could ea sily be traced by consulting ll l l m Meyer. He could usually te you not mere y the vo u e ” but the very .page . During the three years that Meyer remained here he published several immrtant papers , among which may be mentioned his contributions to the constitu tion of camphor, of chloral hydrate and of the benzene ring . ’ Towards the end of 1 870 , at Ba eyer s recommenda r tion , Meyer wa s appointed professor extraordina y at the S tuttgart Polytechnik, of the chemical laboratory of t which H . v . Fehling wa s the director. Here the twen y - - v t three year old professor, who had never been pri a d ocent, wa s put in charge of the organic chemistry

S tuttgart proved an incentive to renewed a ctivity. Here he announced his discovery of the nitro compounds

1 80

EMINENT CHEMIS TS OF OUR TIME

brought from Stuttgart to replace him, and Meyer o m f und him a co petent substitute . I have given him ” “ ' om ro s in the laboratory, he writes ; this is of the u tmost importance , as thereby he can do, twice a s much - work. He is very conscientious so much so , that I think I shall send for another one of my Stuttgart ” pupils .

S atisfied a s he was with the a ssistants he imported,

Meyerwa s far from satisfied with the a ssistants he found , o l or with the c o reception accorded him by the students . In S tuttgart he was the idol of his pupil s ; here the men ha d little sympathy with one so much taken up with the o i the retical a spect of the su bject . One s ngle publi cation on some cheese prepar a tion makes one far more celebrated in S witzerland than one thou sand discoveries l ” in the fie d of pure organic chemistry, he writes bitterly. But the day wa s to come when the Swiss were to vener m ate hi , and the day wa s also to come when Meyer would love his Ziirich students and the Ziirich a tmosphere . ll From the very first he ha d his hands fu . I am ” very busy, he writes, a s you can conclude from the following : I devote eight hours to lecture s in organic chemistry, two to lectures on analytical chemistry, two to metallurgy (in pla ce of Kopp , who is in Vienna ) , and ’ besides this I have to superintend Kopp s a s well a s my ” o him m own lab ratory . Bu t this did not prevent fro o l pursuing his research work . In the m nth of Ju y he records the synthesis of diphenyl-methane from benzoyl l d m o i l t alcoho an benzene . This co p und , wh ch me ts a ° l d 2 6 C . , Meyer pla ced on his writing tab e , an used it i i if in place of a thermometer. At ten n the morn ng, the sub stance wa s in a molten state , the Herr Professor would announce that weather conditions ma de it im pra cticable to pursue any work in the la boratory ; and on then professor and students would go bathing. On e

1 82

’ a a a u s for determinin the a or densi a V. Meyer s pp r t g v p ty , factor of anc in d ducin he consti ution of com ound R d d import e e g t t p s. [ epro uce om ric e tschen chs fr the Be ht d er d eu mischen Gesellschaft. ]

8 0 earn chemical laboratories there . Their journey lay over d s Munich, an here the first st0 p wa made . We have ” alrea dy been in Munich and Graetz , he writes and in both pla ces we had a most delightful time . In

Munich I spent a lovely time with Ba eyer , Otto Fischer and Klinig, and one delightful musical afternoon with ” d the Heyses . (Here he refers to Heyse , the poet an novelist . ) Again : The new buildings in Vienna defy l description . The Parlia ment, the Guildhal , the Uni versity and the Hofburg Theatre constitute a section beside which the Place de la Concorde in Paris fades i l into ins gnificance . In a ddition, they ha ve the recent y constructed museums by S emper, which are the finest examples of Renaissance architecture . I witnessed a performa nce of the Walkiire and the second part of

l Lu a. Faust. I also saw my o d flame , the actress cc You can imagine how happy I was to see her again after l a s thirteen years of absence . She is a s beautifu ever, l ” time not seeming to have a tered her .

ii . In July, 1 884, H bner, the GOttingen professor, died ’ al Meyer s friend Klein , who informed him of this, so ou of told him that he wa s a likely candidate . The th ght a ha d having to leave Ziirich wa s quite unbearable . Wh t - — he not accomplished during these thirteen never to be wo l forgotten years ! But, then, to step into the r d ’ — famed Gottingen school that had also to be considered . - Meyer had not yet rea ched his thirty sixth year . He ’ had to regard the call to WOhler s old establishment a s the highest compliment tha t could be pa id to him .

Indeed , the complicient proved a higher one than even

e . he expe cted, for none others were even to be consider d During the la st da ys of the year 1 889 Meyer procee ded to Bonn to undergo an energetic cure : a sort of ma ssage : For and electrical trea tment combined . He writes fourteen days I lived in the strictest incognito , going 1 4 1 85 EMINENT CHEMIS TS OF ! OUR TIME

a week ago I have given this up and am now with Wallach d and Kekulé da ily. To see Kekulé once again an to ’ o o speak to him does one s heart good . You will n t c n sider me vain when I tell you that it was delightful to

among the chemists of the younger generation . Wallach

a s h h no ea sy life of it . Wha t a pity that e cannot go to Ziirich l I suppose you have heard that Hantzsch ha s m a been no inated to succeed me . I am gla d to see th t

Wallach has completed a wonderful piece of work on the -m ” terpenes which must surely become epoch aking . Meyer left Bonn in indifierent health and after a short stay in Ziirich proceeded to the Riviera with his

parents. Here he felt himself slightly better, but not e re v ry much so . Italy and the Riviera a very nice , but only for the one who is in a po sition to enjoy her ” a be uties, he writes . In my case , where I dare not - ’ go beyond one half hour s distance from the house , the ” m a ount ins call in vain .

In this condition Meyer proceeded to Gottingen . He wa s comforted to a large extent in that his excellent h a ssistant, S andmeyer, a ccompanied him for t e summer m ’ “ ” se ester. S andmeyer, one of Meyer s discoveries ,

’ started as a mechanic in Meyer s laboratory, but soon

gave this up to devote all his time to chemistry. Meyer left Ziirich without being able to take leave of his students, but some months later he returned to l a ttend the seventieth birt hday of Kappe er . At the ’ Kommers, which was given in the old man s honor, l Meyer was among the speakers. Professor Go d schmidt thus describes the scene : I see him (Meyer)

1 86

VICTOR MEYER

and realizing how much the finished product is de

pendent uponthe quality of the tools employed, Meyer threw himself into it with a wholeheartedness which wa s o chara cteristic f everything he undertook . Another step in the direction of increa sing efliciency o m i wa s the formation of the G ttingen Che ical S oc ety . The number of research men ha d risen to such a height — a t this time there were I os that Meyer readily fore saw the a dvantage of organizing a club where these men nd o could congregate a discuss current t pics . At these meetings the students would give a ccounts of the

progress of their la test investiga tions, and professors l e a l and students wou d ng ge in friend y criticism . The wa s li l esprit d e corps thus created tt e short of wonderful. The one source of great worry to Meyer a s well a s to his dear friends wa s the state of his health , which at

best wa s but indifierent . Here in Gottingen h e had r formed a very intimate f iendship with Ebstein , a well

known professor in the medical fa culty, and, fortuna tely for him, Ebstein wa s untiring in his efiorts. In 1 888, d when Meyer sufiered a ba atta ck of diphtheria , only ’ r a a his f iend s constant ttention s ved him . Ebstein pre

scribed no end of rest cures . These were well enou gh in themselves, but, a s they so often clashed with work o o o l l in the lab ra t ry, Meyer fretted n t a itt e . However, l fee ing that it was a question of life and death , he usually

It wa s on one of these recuperation tours that Meyer r l iiri o evisited his o d Z ch . His recepti n by faculty and students left no doubt a s to the way they regarded their ol d professor. But he ha d alrea dy ha d a proof of this o h ii shortly after he came to G ttingen . T en his Z rich scholars sent him an a ddress which he described a s so etwa s schiines habe ich noch nicht gelesen und a uch noch nicht gesehen ! 1 89

s ll ’ any pretensions wa fi ed by one of Bunsen s pupils .

to have Meyer succee d him .

Heidelberg, and they scarcely left him till the day of his

’ Kinder ! Lebt wohl ! Meine Nerven sind zerstbrt, ich

in the full bloom of his powers , this remarkably gifted man pa ssed away.

From the reports which have come to us it would

, ll- extraordinary command of language , spoken in a we z 1 92 l - modulated voice , and coup ed with a well nigh unrivalled u far knowledge of his s bject , went to a ssure success . ’ l o In a ddition, Meyer s aborat ry technique , one of his precious a ssets , stood him in excellent stea d when — experimentally illustrating his lectures and his lectures were always copiously illustrated by experiments, in the o i a 1 preparati n of wh ch no p ins were spared . ll m Nor as a man did he fa short . S y pathetic by nature , generous almost to a fault, always eager to a cknowledge the labor of others , with not a taint of jealousy in his - make up, full of a hearty Optimism which made him a congenial companion, a S plendid raconteu r, an excellent

o - after dinner speaker, a violin player of no mean calibre these qualities endeared him to all . His friends , k Bunsen , Kopp , Erlenmeyer, Ba eyer, Graebe , Ke ulé , L m ieber ann , Fischer, etc ., respected him not only a s an ll 2 eminent co eague , but loved him a s a man of worth .

His house was a ce ntre not merely for scientific , but literary and artistic notables . At these gatherings his “ 1 I well recollect that the word most frequently u sed in Ziirich ’ in defining the opinions of Victor Meyer s students of his lectures a rillian ! o mi a r icularl s uck ws b t (Wats n S th) . Wh t pa t y tr me about his lectures was their finished style . He made fairly ns f kin i r a idi Y hi co tant use o n otes, spea g w th g e t rap ty. et s treat men e his e r e t of the subject was v ry clear, and languag pe f ct . The experiments were always well prepare d and exceptionally success ful . n r o ular ohn I deed, his lectures we e m st pop . (J I.

2 i n zii k i i e n allem Ich muss Euch doch sagen, w e e t c t ch w d r vo in B ch n e an herrlich b : erlin, Halle, Miinchen. In Miin e war s g z i h Bae er rifi einmal m t Baeyers, Fisc ers, und dem anderen. y erg bei Tische das Glas um mit Emil Fishcer und mir S chmollis zu

’ momentan machen, denkt nur, der liebe Mannl Es brachte uns

i n konn en ihn un eniert Du zu Tage , bis w r uns daran gewohne t , g ” in a e o hi ro her cto er 1 nennen. (Victor Meyer, l tter t s b t , O b 7,

1 93

With the exception of history, Remsen excelled in all ll l l subjects at the Co ege , particu ar y in mathema tics . The highly suggestive way of tea ching history wa s to cram dates down your throat : if they refused to stick, d no you were a poor student of history. Remsen ha memory for da tes, and so he was a djudged a poor o stu dent of hist ry. Latin and Greek were also pumped into his poor little l system, to which, strange y enough , Remsen took very kindly. Of science there wa s precious little . Dr.

Ogden Doremus embra ced the whole of science; lo o — ana tomy, physiology, geo gy, a str nomy, etc . , in a o c urse of lectures given once a week during the year. o l o Pr f. Wo c tt Gibbs , later at Harvard, did give a few lectures on chemistry, but these ma de no impression u s s pon Rem en . What helped con iderably were Dore ’ mus s popular lectures on physics and chemistry, given in the large lecture hall of the Cooper Institu te . x Doremus never spar ed e periments, and thereby he aroused interest in many of his hear ers, among them m Re sen .

Remsen never graduated from the Free Aca demy. His father had decided tha t the la d should study medi d i o cine, an in the opinion of th s g od man, a s well a s in that of the family physician , the earlier Ira wa s started upon his medical career, the better . That the boy ha d o l sh wn no aptitude along this ine mattered little . In those days parents did not consult children, and children were obedient . Remsen wa s apprenticed to a medical man who taught m s che i try in the homeopathic medical college . That o - w rthy man gave the boy a text book of chemistry, and “ ” ai a ! s d , Re d So rea d he did. But it wa s Greek — tohim worse than Greek, for he knew something of that language . Years later, in one among his many 1 99 How should I stop this?

2 0 0

IRA REMS EN

research centers on the continent . Remsen had read ’ s Liebig s Chemical Le tters. Liebig wa the great

chemist of Germany, with but one rival, Wiihl er. Every body spoke of Liebig ; even the child in the stre et ha d ’ heard of Liebig s beef extract . ’ We are not told how well Remsen s fa ther received the ’ young man s proposed change of program . Whether

well or otherwise , the younger man triumphed . Towards

the end of the summer in 1 867 the M . D . set out for

Munich .

Arriving in Munich, Remsen had his first hopes da shed to the ground by being told that Liebig no longer received

students . All he did at this time wa s to give a lecture

course in inorganic chemistry. The young foreigner then was forced to turn to the most promising priva t d ’ ocent in Liebig s laboratory, who happened to be l ’ m Jacob Vo hard . In Volhard s laboratory Re sen re

ceive d his first systematic instruction in chemistry . Up to that time he had never made the simme st analysis ; he had only performed the crudest experiments for l ecture purposes .

He S pent two semesters in Munich, from October 1 ’ 867 to Au gust 1 868, working in Volhard s laboratory . - — The priva t d ocent had few students sometimes Rem s l sen wa the on y one ia the laboratory . This was an extremely fortunate circumstance for the American ; he received private instructions from one of the best la o a b r tory manipulators of the day. Remsen also ’ a Lieb . ttended ig s course of lectures . At the end of the year Volhard advised him to go to a

' la l rger aboratory and suggest ed Gottingen . Fortunately, hler Wii , the professor at GOttingen, was then in Munich, a his old on visit to friend Liebig . Through Volhard

Remsen secured an introduction to Wlihler, who told a him th t he would be very welcome in t tingen. 2 03

IRA REMS EN.

and s workers . It pa ssed through five editions, wa trans lated into German and Russian . o La ter , when at Johns H pkins , Remsen wrote a number of books on inorganic and organic chemistry, d with almost unvarying success . Ha his reputa tion to - rest on nothing more than author of such text books , he would find no inconspicuous place in the history of chemistry in America . Then in 1 876 came that great change in universities in the United S tates with the establishment of a graduate school at Johns Hopkins , in Baltimore . Huxley, then l in this country, very appropriate y ushered in the new l era by an a ddress of welcome . Gilders eeve , the Greek scholar, Rowland , the physicist, and S ylvester, the mathematician , were appointed to form a nucleus of o m promising scholars . To this tri was a dded Ira Re sen a s professor of chemistry. He was then thirty year s old . m The position could not have been more ideal . E pha sis wa s to be placed upon advanced , graduate work, the professors were expected to do research, and the necessary facilities were to be provided to the extent no that money could provide them . There were petty o restrictions of any kind . Do your best work and d ” it in your own way . That was the only a dvice Presi o fl dent Gilman had t o er. l r l In May, 1 877 , Remsen de ivered his fi st ecture on a dvanced organic chemistry to a small group of students huddled together in a room which ha s since become a of r m s st e oo for odds and ends . Research wa begun mm l l m o i ediate y . Regular week y eetings t discuss w current topics were also introduced . no here m s o a a e lse [in A erica ], so far a I kn w , ha d the dv nced stu dents been taken in and given an opportunity to acquire the habit of familiarizing themselves with the current progress of the science and of perfecting them 2 0 7 EMINENT CHEMIS TS OF OUR TIME

selves in the art of giving concise and lucid expression to the information a cquired in the course of their ” 1 reading . The extensive series of researches begun in 1 877 and carried on without a break well into the twentieth century

dealt with various pha ses of organic chemistry . Perhaps the most interesting outcome from a practical stand

point wa s the preparation oi ortho benzoic sulphinid e, or o saccha rin, in 1 879 . This substance , obta ined fr m

toluene , a product of coal tar, is unique in being five mo hundred times a s sweet a s sugar . In spite of the re than carbon compounds that have been pre s pared , no substance similar to it in sweetness ha ever h been unearthed. And t e wonder increa ses when we

remember that , chemically, saccharin and sugar have

nothing in common .

At first Remsen sent his contributions to Prof . J . D .

Dana for the American Journal of S cience, but soon the

amount of matter grew to such proportions , that it fright

ened poor Dana . The work wa s of such a specialised char acter ; perhaps it would be more desirable to send

su ch contributions to foreign journals? queried Dana . Remsen felt that the time ha d come to found a chemi cal o journal ln America . With this in view, he g t into o m t uch with the leaders of science. Most of the dis couraged the plan ; very few had anything to say in favor of it . Despite this cold reception , he started the Ame ca 1 ri n Chemical Jou rnal in 879 . It proved a suc m m l cess fro the start . Workers fro al over the country a l beg n to flood the pub ication with contributions . As a stimulant to research in chemistry at various scientific centers , the Journal stood in the same relation a s John

1 ‘ Prof. H . or e Dir or of he o ki N . M s , ect t J hns Hop ns De pt. of

2 0 8

IRA REMS EN

kl ’ fessed quite fran y later. With time the students “ desire to make it hot for the teacher gave place to a m desire to plea se . Re sen with his simplicity, his m humor, his interesting ethods of presenting the subject, m l made himself very uch iked . At Johns Hopkins he

was extremely popular because , in a ddition to sound

scholarship , he ha d so much of the milk of human

kindness ; he forgave much .

One point, however , about which he was very particular l Was punctuality . A story is to d of him in this respect . While engaged in a lecture upon some of the chemical r elements, he wa s in the act of desc ibing some attribu tes

of sulphur . As he uttered the first syllable , sul the dpor in the back of the room opened and a young a al man noted for his h bitu lateness entered . The in structor stopped short and stood with the word half

uttered while the aba shed student, in the midst of an - m awful and soul oppressing silence , ade his hasty way l to a seat . Then with a tone of strong re ief, and with

the interest of each student intensified upon him, Remsen suddenly gave expression to the concluding sylla ble of his word phur i At the request of the National Board of Health of 1 Baltimore , Remsen , in 88 1 , undertook an investigation into the organic matter in the air, and a study of the impurities in the air of rooms heated by hot air furance s and by stoves . S imilar work was done for the city of 2 m m m Boston . In 1 88 he beca e a e ber of the National

Academy of S ciences, and in 1 884 served on a com mittee appointed to investigate the glucose industry of

the United S tates . Another committee upon which he served dealt with the question of the processes employed l in denaturing alcoho . In 1 909 President Roosevelt appointed Remsen chair man oi a board of consulting scientific experts to aid

2 1 ! EMINENT CHEMIS TS OF OUR TIME the S ecretary of Agriculture in matters pertaining to m the a d inistration of the pure food law . The other m me bers of this board were Dr . R . H . Chittendon,

h fii ld . Director of the S e e S cientific S chool ; Dr . J H .

Long, Professor of Chemistry and Director of the Chem ical Laboratories in Northwestern University ; Dr . C . A .

Herter, Professor of Pharmacology and Therapeutics, l Co umbia University ; Dr . A . E . Tal r, Professor of

Pathology and he a d of the Department, University of California ; now Professor of Physiological Chemistry in l r the University of Pennsy vania . D . Herter died in De cembor, 1 9 1 0 , and Dr. Theobald Smith , Professor of l Comparative Patho ogy in the Harvard Medical S chool, - wa s appointed to fill his place . The Board wa s gener ” ally known a s the Remsen Board .

Dr . Wiley, chief chemist of the U . S . Department of

Agriculture , selected a number of men as subjects for l investigation on the a ssimi ation of benzo ate of soda . ” These men ca me to be known a s the poison squad . l x l Dr . Wi ey declared that in e periments which ha d asted ill some twenty days , a number of the men had become . The maximum amount of th e sodium benzoate given to any one man, and distributed over the twenty days wa s - one and two thirds ounces . ’ r l . D . Wi ey s conclusion did not pass unchallenged S ome authorities declar ed that the fever of the young men wa s due to nothing more than an epidemic of grip which was then raging . Neither were the experiments l themse ves considered very satisfactory . The majority of the individual s had been used in previous experiments ill where they ha d been ma de ; and the sodium benzoate , — instea d of being distributed in the food just a s it is — when used as a preservative wa s given to the patients in capsules

2 1 2

EMINENT CHEMIS TS OF OUR TIME received the Willard Gibbs Medal of the Chicago Section

‘ of the American Chemical S ociety. m 1 8 l Re sen wa s married in 75 to E izabeth H . Mallory, a da ughter of a New York merchant, who with his family spent his summers in Williamstown . They have two o l sons, Ira M . wh is an artist, and Char es M . , a surgeon, r p acticing in Atlanta , Ga . ’ As President of Johns Hopkins , Remsen s time for rese arch wa s very limited . One of his rea sons for retiring from the presidency was a desire to return to the love of his younger days , and this return to the ” fold ma de him ha ppy again . The transformation m from university president to chemist is co plete , and I ” rejoice . References m m m Part of the infor a tion co es fro private sources . ’ Remsen s address before the Chicago section of the m r a C al S l i 1 1 1 A e ic n hemic ociety, de ivered n 9 4 ( ) contains much of biographical interest . For details ’ regarding the Tiibingen days , Tilden s S ir William R a 2 ams y ( ) ha s been of service . Other articles that were found useful were 3 , 4, 5 , 6 , 7 and 8 . ’ Remsen s celebrated article on saccharin was pub lished in the American Chemical Journal He is - al so the author of a number of well known texts, refer ence s to some of these being given ( 1 0 , 1 1 , 1 2 , 1 3 ,

Ir R m n : Th De elo men of hemi Re in 1 . a e se e v p t C cal search ur o th Ameri America . Jo nal f e can Chemical S ocie ty, 3 7, 1

ir W . A . il en : S ir William amsa 2 . S T d R y (Macmillan and Co. 1 91 8)

n. Referee Board Re ort on l o a 3 . Ano : p s A um F ods. Americ n ou r Food J nal , May, 1 9 1 4 , p . 1 88 . non : A indication of en oate of S o from e cks of 4 . A . V B z da th atta e u rr nt L ter ture 52 Dr. Wil y. C e i a , , 3 0 4 2 1 4 IRA REMS EN

f R m n n Marcus Benjamin : Pro . Ira e se , Preside t of the Ameri n for e an emen of e t can Associatio th Adv c t S cience . S ci n ific

American, 88 , 1 9 ’ on. : ohns Ho in Ne Presiden . Bal timore u a 6 . An J pk s w t S nd y

Herald , Oct . 1 3 , 1 90 1 . u s B n : De elo men of h mi e Marc e jamin v p t C e stry in Am rica .

The S tar, May 2 5 , 1 890 . n n R n o of d n 8. A o . : The esig ati n Presi e t Remsen. The Johns

Ho Universit ircula r No . 1 1 1 2 pkins y C , 0 , 9 . F n i Ira Remsen and C . ahlberg : O the Oxidation of S ubst tution

Prod c s of roma H ocarbons. On xi on u t A tic ydr IV. the O dati of Or o olu ene sul hamid a r th t p e . Americ n Chemical Jou nal ,

1 ; 42 6 ( 1 879) Ira Remsen : Princi les of h ore ical r ’ p T e t Chemist y (H . C . Lea s n hil S o and Co. , P a delphia . Ira Remsen : An Introdu ction to the S tu dy of the Compounds of n D ea Bo o Ca rbo ( . C . H th and Co. , st n. Ira Re en : l m n f h mi ms E e e ts o C e stry (Macmillan and Co.

Ira R emsen : nor anic hemi a mill I g C stry (M c an and Co. - Ira Remsen : A College Text Book of Chemistry (Macmillan

and Co .

2 1 5

EMIL FISCHER

news ha s reached us that Emil Fischer m is no ore . Since the fateful Augu st, 1 m l 1 9 4 , Ger any has ost her Ehrlich , her d r l Buchner an her Baeye ; Eng and, her d o l Ramsay, Crookes an M se ey . Deaths occur, wars or no wars ; yet Buchner might have lived had not a shell cut short his existence ; and young Moseley ha d barely started along his brilliant career when he , like t he promising Rupert Brook! laid down his life for his ’ belove d England . Ramsay s end, we know, was ’ l ha stened by manifo d war duties . To what extent “Fischer wa s a victim of the war is still unknown to us ; but we were told, from time to time , of his violent pan

Germa nism, doubtless encouraged by the exalted po si tion he held under the crown . The magnitu de of ’ Germany s d ébacle would have crushed a spirit less e -Re ie t proud than G heimer g rungsra Fischer . ’ Whatever Opinions we may have regarding Fischer s political afi liations, there can be no question of his o m position in the hist ry of che istry . His bitterest o u enemies are the first t pay trib te . He ea sily takes his or a m o place a s the greatest g nic che ist of ur generation . l To appreciate his work a ittle more , we must look into the state of the science when Fischer began his o — — labors . In th se days ih the se venties organic chem mi istry, or the che stry of the compounds of carbon , wa s l mo ul a fie d for the st fruitf research . The a ddition of ‘ o d nd ox carb n an hydrogen a ygen atoms, and the vari m m l ous rearrange ents within a o ecule , could be accom l plish ed with such re ative ea se , that candidates wishing

1 6 2 1 7 EMINENT CHEMIS TS OF OUR TIME

’ to get a doctor s degree in the shortest time were rea dily a a hi a of om ttr cted to t s br nch the science . New c pounds of carbon were being daily manufactu red by the score in Germany, England and France . In many ca se s these compounds have remained of interest to the writers of reference books only“ A number, however, found wider application in the dye a nd drug industry . That animal and vegetable life were largely made up of carbon compounds , that the food we eat could be largely divided into fat, proteins and carbohydrates , all this was known . If, then , a knowledge of the composition of these substances , a s truly belonging to r o ganic chemistry a s marsh gas or benzene , wa s vague and wholly unsatisfa ctory, this wa s due to the complexity , - of their make up . Chevreul and Berthollet ha d cleared the situation in so far a s the fats were con cerned , but the chemistry of the carbohydrates , and particularly that of the proteins , remained as mysterious a s ever. The three foodstuffs were the borderland where chemistry ended and biology began ; the la ck of a solution of the composition of at least / two of these foodstufls left the finishing touches of the edifice of organic chemistry still undone , and gave a wholly nu

satisfactory foundation for the science of physiology . To the solution of this problem Fischer pledged his life while still a student, and brilliantly did he fulfil ’ o m l his life s ta sk . With an ima ginati n te pered on y b a l a an al of mi y sp endid scientific tr ining, origin ity nd which made a la sting impress upon every piece of work with which he wa s a ssocia ted , and a rare skill in devising a s a pparatus , he , fir st by his own labors, and later, - a director general of an army of a spiring students, gr du ally unfolded the mysteries that ha d enshrined the most L l complex chemical substances known to man. ike al

2 1 8

chlorophyll wizard , who ha s recently been appointed to

ll m inte ectual output . His a azing ma stery of every

combined with the fatherly care he took of his child ” ren, the students , ma de Ba eyer very popular with his a ssistants and re search workers, not lea st of all with

Fischer.

faculty for detecting promising ma terial wa s not the l ea st of his gifts .

o p henylhydrazine , forged t the very front rank of

proved the most effective tool in synthesising the sugars,

- To day the osazone test for sugars , a test depending

2 20 EMIL FIS CHER

l the chemist , the physio ogist and the clinician for the isolation and detection of the sugars .

Little wonder , then , that when Baeyer in this same year was selected to su cceed Liebig in Munich , he was desir l ous that young Fischer shou d a ccompany him . This , of course , wa s just what Fischer wanted . For the next three years Fischer held no ofiicial posi tion at the University of Munich . As events proved , this wa s the most fortunate thing that could have happened . He had no students to instruct, no labor atory work to supervise ; the entire time could be de voted to research . And how well did Fischer make use of this time !

With phenylhydrazine a s the starting point , the various derivatives of this parent substance were investigated , and its relationship to a group of substances that act “ ” — a s intermediates in the manufacture of dyes the d ia m l l zo co pounds , was c ear y established . The ea se with which phenylhydrazine combines with other sub stances gave rise to an almost endless series of new o m a c mpounds . To us of particular interest is its co bin tion with two important cla sses of organic compounds — known a s the ald ehyd es and ke tones a discovery which found direct application in the chemistry of the sugars . Victor Meyer , by the use of hydroxylamine , a substance closely related to ammonia , had also shown how the aldehydes and ketones could be recognized . f S tarting from two di ferent angles , Meyer and Fischer , who became the closest of friends , and whom Ba eyer a reg rded a s his two most talented pupils, met on com mon ground . Between them they opened up two va st a o a m ch pters in rg nic che istry . m m At the sa e ti e , Fischer , in collaboration with his “ cousin Otto Fische r, began an investigation of the — — rosaniline dyestuffs the magenta of Perkin which

2 2 1 protein in the nucleu s of

2 22

EMINENT CHEMIS TS OF OUR TIME

know that oxidising ferments facilitate the reaction t at

body temperature , and the work of Dakin and Lusk in this country ha s made it seem probable tha t a glycerin l ike substance or substances , an d lactic a cid , are im

portant intermediate products .

Thus, a s in simpler chemical reactions, the beginning d an end of the reaction are clear , but again like any m che ical reaction , the intermediate steps are very difi l cult to e ucidate . - It wa s in the course of these epoch ma king experi m ents on the sugar s , when phenylhydrazine was con l stant y used , that Fischer began to sufier with chronic ” o pois ning, due to the inhalation of the vapors of this fi v m substance . Its e ects he ne er got rid of, and fro - l then on he wa s more or less of a semi inva id . This might pe rhaps explain why in after years students found

him somewhat of a grouch and quite unapproachable . The testimony of some of his students at Wiirzburg seems to bear conclusive witness to the fact that in

those days , at lea st, he wa s not only an inspiring leader l r and ecturer, but took a very active interest in his e m s mm him search en . It wa no unco on thing to see

spend a couple of hours at the desk of one of his stu dents ,

not only discussing the problem and offering suggestions , bu t actually illustrating experimental methods of pro edur ll m l r l c e . S uch i ustrations were si p y p ice ess in s value to the young ka ndidat, f0r Fischer wa a ma ster n manipulator a s well a s a ma ster thi ker . ’ Like Victor Meyer and Ramsay and van t Hofi , the a ppointment to a full professorship made fea sible his

marriage to the la dy he had long courted , Fraulein

Agnes Gerla ch . The two ma de a striking pair. Both - l were tall and handsome , with intellect and wit a p enty .

Their son , H ermann , has faithfully followed in his ’ father s footsteps . 2 2 4 EMIL FIS CHER

In 1 892 came the crowning event of his career . A . W .

Hofimann, who had been professor at the Royal S chool

of Chemistry in London for some years , and had there

ta ught such men a s Crookes and Perkin , and had then been appointed to the chair of chemistry at Berlin Uni r ve sity, died , and Fischer wa s selected to succeed him .

This wa s a signal honor , for the Prussian Ministry of Education left no stone unturned to make Berlin the m fore ost center of learning and research in the Empire , and only men whose standin g in the world of scholarship s ll ll wa universa y conceded , were at a considered . Fischer stipulated tha t he would a ccept the position only on condition that a new laboratory would be built for m l - hi . He h a d in mind his splendid y equipped labor r ato y in Wiirzburg, where the authorities provided him with ample facilities and gave him unrestricted freedom to equip the chemistry building with the best and the l r o atest innovations . The Be lin authorities pr mised the n m ew laboratory, and so Fischer moved to his new ho e .

Four years , however, were to pa ss before the foundation

stone for the new structure wa s to be laid . This was

due to the bad financial condition of the university.

In Berlin Fischer continued his work on the sugars . The fact that many of these bring about fermentation led Fischer to fruitful studies on the possible consti tution of ferments and their relationship to the substance they a ct upon . This subject of ferments, or enzymes, is of such tremendous significance in the activity of all l f - o i e pr cesses, that it merits a somewha t detailed discu ssion . The word enzyme comes from a Greek word meaning ” in yea st . Perhaps the most acceptable definition in the light of recent scientific research is to say that it is a substance showing the properties of a catalyst and pro d r l l uced a s a esu t of cellu ar activity . 2 2 5 EMINENT CHEMISTS OF OUR TIME

But what is a catalyst? The reader may recall his m r first very simme expe ri ent in the p eparation of oxygen . Here the instructor tells the bewildered youth that if you put a little pota ssium chlorate in a test tube and heat this very strongly, a gas is evolved which can be identi m l fied a s oxygen . Now by ere y adding a small quantity l - of a dirty b a ck looking powder , called manganese di oxide , to the potassium chlorate , the oxygen is evolved much more rapidly and at a much lower temperature ; ll ar l am a o at o But this is not a . A c efu ex in ti n the end f the reaction shows tha t th e manganese dioxide has not

changed in any way : we have the same substance , and the same amount, at the end of the rea ction as at the beginning . Many such substances are known to chem

e a e m 1 l ll r t che ical reactions, a nd that a relative y sma , at times insignificant quantity of the substance sufi c es o l t bring about the chemica change .

In cells we find substances of this type , but thus far ll l ” these ce u ar catalysts , unlike the manganese dioxide , and like proteins , have never been produced outside of the cell . When we consider that life is possible only because of ll la a nd w e we a m n continued ce u r ctivity, a h n be r in i d that this activity is largely the result of chemical changes a t m a am im brought bout by hese enzy es, the p r ount portance of these substances becomes ma nifest .

Alcoholic fermenta tion with yeast, the souring of

milk, processes of putrefaction , and various other ex m a ples of changes in organic materials with, often m enough , the acco panying liberation of bubbles of gas, - had long been known . The epoch making researches of Pa steur had shown tha t fermentations and putre factions were inaugurated by the presence of living

1 a e are kn h e e re on C s s own w er th y tard chemical reacti s. 2 2 6

EMINENT CHEMIS TS OF OUR TIME

difi cult problems in physiological chemistry . Yet any elementa ry student in the subject finds little difi culty in performing simple experiments which convince him

either of the presence or the absence of the enzyme . Th e method consists essentially in making use of the - so called S pecificity of enzymes , a conception for l which Fischer is large y responsible . ’ i Fischer s synthetic work in the sugar series , part cu

larly his studies into the configuration of cane sugar ,

maltose and lactose , received a great impetus from the

success\which attended his efforts in preparing gluco — sides combinations of glucose and one or more other — r ifi i l m substances a t c a ly. By the study of e ulsin , and l other enzymes in yea st, on such g ucosides, Fischer found that the slightest change in the configuration of l the g ucoside inhibited the action of the enzyme . Zy ‘ ma se , another enzyme in yea st, which is directly re

sponsible for the conversion of gl u cose into al cohol, l behaved similar y. This led him to the conclusion that a close chemical relationship exists between the enzyme — and the substance on which it acts a view which led l to his famous analogy of the ock and key rel ationship .

Just a s one key fits one look, so any one enzyme will ct o a on only a certain type f substance . l Take , for example , the enzyme found in sa iva , ptyalin ; it readily a cts on the carbohydrate , starch, but s ha no action on protein . Again take the pepsin of the stoma ch : this enzyme breaks down proteins, but is without result on carbo hydra te s . These instances may m l i l be ultip ied indefin te y . S ome enzymes show their specificity to an even more ’ marked degree . Fischer s work ha s given us beautiful illustrations . Even in the yea st cell we find one , sucrose, which a cts only on cane sugar (sucrose) , but on no other sugar or any carbohydrate .

2 2 8 In the winter of 1 894 Fischer resumed his earlier work fl on uric acid and ca eine . After three years he suc ceeded in synthetically producing every constituent of

the group , and traced them all to a mother substance to which he gave the name of pu rin (a word suggest ed by

the phra se pu ru m u ricu m) . l The chemist, the physio ogist and the pathologist

can but wonder at such genius. Here are the most m l co plex and the most important c a ss of protein bodies , - the ao called nucleoproteins , which a s their name l l ll imp ies, are found in the nuc eus of the ce , and which, in the course of their chemical decomposition in the

body, give rise to xa nthine, hypoxanthine, adanine , uan — g ine , etc . all typical purines ; here are these

purines which, in their further travels in the body, come th a m r oxi to e liver, where a large percent ge of the a e s — di ed to uric acid another member of the purine family . This same uric acid is a never-failing constituent of the

urine , and its quantity gives valuable data regarding — nucleoprotein metabolism in the body, oi pa ramount r importance in such a disea se a s gout . The inte rela tionship of these complex purines, a s well a s their o f relati nship to plant anal ogues , such a s ca feine and

’ o theobromine , have been a s thoroughly pr bed by Fischer a s the composition of water or that of air. He ha s gone a o and a even further . Having found rel ti nships , h ving s tra ced the substances to one mother substance , he ha succeeded in building them all up from this mother — one x e substance a piece of work which, with but e c p o ti n, finds no equal in synthetic chemistry . ’ The one exception is Fischer s crowning series of re ar on oa hi t se ches the proteins . No work appr c ng his had ever been done before . The proteins are the most important of the three la ll and c sses of foodstuffs . Without them ce ular growth 2 2 9 right direction .

Due in no small part to the labors - co workers, most of these nineteen

2 30

IEl dDL FI S CflI EJ t

If the hydrolysis of proteins , and the investigation of the decomposition products so produced was a difficult ta sk, what are we to say of the reverse process, whereby, - by starting with amino acids, we build up proteins?

Yet that is what Fischer did . He succeeded in work ing out methods by which amino-acids could be chemi cally joined on to one another in some such way a s the d links of a chain. He has given the name polypepti s m m - to such co binations of a ino a cids . In his most celebrated experiment in the synthesis of proteins , Fischer su cceeded in combining eighteen - — — amino acids an octa de capeptid which is one of the most complicated artificial substances tha t ha s ever been produ ced, and which shows some very striking resemblances to the natural proteins , not the lea st of which is the way trypsin , the pancreatic enzyme , breaks it up into the amino-acids out of which the artificial protein wa s built . m m m e The enzymes , a s the reader ay re e ber, ar m specific in their rea ction . The trypsin is an enzy e which a cts only on proteins and on no other cla ss of ’ substances ; hence its action on Fischer s octa deca peptid is good evidence in support of the view that the artificial product is really of th e nature of at lea st the simpler proteins . The sta rting materials for this “ ” h s synthesis cost $2 50 ; so that, says Fischer , it a not yet ma de its appearance on the dining table ! These glorious researches were still in full bla st in 1 90 2 when Fischer wa s awarded the Nobel prize in C ’ ff’ hemistry, the prizes in physics going to van t Ho s o m , . . L and Z ma c untry en H A orentz \ Pieter ee n ; in m d edicine , to Ronal d Ross , the malaria hero ; an in

li r . te atu refto Theodor Mommsen, the Roman historian ’ Fischer s diploma reads a s follows

1 7 2 3 1 EMINENT CHEMIS TS OF OUR TIME

CHIMIE

’ L Académie Royal e des S ciences de S uide dans sa séance du 1 1 novembre 1 90 2 ; a décidé conformément ’ aux prescriptions du testament d Alfred Nobel en da te 1 du 2 7 novembre 89 5 , de remettre lo prix décerné cette ’ année a celui qui aura fait la découverte ou l invention le plus importante dans la domain de la physique a

EMIL FIS CHER

en reconnaissance des mérites eminents dont il a fait preuve par ses travaux synthétiques dans le s groupes

du sucre et de la purine. m 2 S tockholm , lo 1 0 dece bre 1 90 . l Hj . Thee

CHR . AURIVILLIUS

If the sugars and the purines deserved the Nobel r m p ize , no prize yet founded is big enough and i portant ’ enou gh a s a reward for Fischer s protein studies . In 1 90 7 the Faraday medal of the English Chemical s Society wa presented to Fischer. This entailed a trip — to England to deliver the Faraday lecture an invita tion 1 which had been extended once before in 895 , but which - ill health at the time prevented from accepting . T r he histo ic lecture , largely taken up with a discussion of the chemistry and significance of the three great cla sses of foodstuffs , wa s delivered in the theatre of the o al s o o 1 8t o a a R y In tituti n , n October h! f th t ye r , with

S ir William Ramsay, president of the S ociety, in the l m r chair . In presenting the meda Ramsay re a ked that it wa s awarded a s a testimony of our great regard for you a s our foreign member and of our aflection for you m war wa s a s a an. ” Within seven years a bloody to twist affection into the deepest hatred . 2 3 2

EMINENT CHEMIS TS OF OUR TIME

- The significance of individual amino acids in diet has been eloquently expounded by Abderhalden , and Mendel and Osborne , and the a dditional vitamins factors — in diet a distantly rela ted topic , but not to be confu sed - o — with the amino acid fa ct r, have been put on a firm founda tion by the labors of Funk, Hopkins and oll Mcc um . There seems to be some foundation for the fact that the opening up of the Rockefeller Institute in New York City gave German scientists some very unplea sant m mo ents . They were afraid that an institute , devoted entirely to research, and manned by talent second to none , would soon outstrip any university, where of necessity tea ching, a side from research , required much l attention . This ed Ostwald , Nernst and Fischer to start a n agita tion for the endowment of some similar

of his authority to the scheme , and by his exertions managed to get considerable sums from wealthy Ger m — ans . The Research Institute at Berlin Dahl em was the result . The initial meeting to celebrate the formation of the Ka iser Wilhelm-Gesellschaft zu r Ford erung d er Wissen schaften wa s held at the omoos of the Ministry of 1 1 1 1 Education in Berlin , on Jan . , 1 9 .

The principal a ddress , Recent Ad vances a nd Prob lems in Chemistry, was delivered by Prof. Fischer. With a graceful trib ute to the far-sighted policy of the Germans in encouraging science , Fischer proceeded to show that such encouragement brought its own reward . Up to 1 9 1 1 sixty percent of the total number of Nobel 1 prizes in chemistry had gone to Germans .

1 r a m h i e e e her him It needs pe h ps to be e p as z d h r that , as Fisc h excellen erman sh o in is no he result of self admits, t is t G w g t t l of far reater superior German intelligence , but pure y th e result g 2 34 EMIL FIS CHER

Fischer next briefly reviewed the important contri butions of the chemist to our knowledge of the three l cla sses of foodstufls, the deve opment of the dye in m du stry, the methods of extracting nitrogen fro the air , for use a s fertilisers , and the manufacture of artificial - “ ” 1 d t . indigo , india rubber , camphor an baekali e The ” beakers and fla sks of the scientific investigator, added l Fischer , with a twinkle which always de ighted his m students , are minute when co pared with the vats l employed by the chemical manufacturer . This re ative difierence in size is also borne out by the comparative ” m n wealth of these two cla sses of e .

Turning to plant and pharmaceutical products, Fischer - proceeded to exhibit a samme of pure chlorophyll , the — work of Willstfitter and drugs such a s veronal and — ’ caffeine both the products of Fischer s genius . Then ca me this characteristic comment : One tenth of this quantity [of veronal ] would sumce to send this entire l l e m gathering into a peaceful s umber . But shou d th ere — demonstration of this soporific coupled with this lec — ture of mine take effect on any susceptible persons present , there is no better remedy than the cup of tea — which we are to enjoy later, for tea and cohee contains a chemical substance [cafieine] which stimu ” la and r tes the heart ne vous system .

o ernmen encoura emen i n e In n d g v t g t than s give elsewh re . E glan , rance and to a la r e ex en in o F , g t t , ur own country, the ch emist — and the scientist generally received no attention from statesmen until the outbreak of the present war. The disgraceful remunera tion ofiere d at colle e s f x i g , and , with ew e ceptions, the poor fa cilit es Ofi ere d for research ha e retard ed e fi o h resul ed , v ev ry e rt, and ave t in the loss to uni ersitie s of some of v their be st minds. This was

efore the war. Perha s hin will b p t gs change now . Perhaps. 1 his last is th e disco er k T v y of Dr. Baekeland of New Yor . ” The ba ekalite as is now well kno er an i , wn, resembles amb , d s - used for such articles as necklace s om l . , c bs, cigar ho ders, etc 2 35 the shrieks

lecture .

2 36

EMINENT CHEMIS TS OF OUR TIME had gone to Berlin to work under Fischer in reality m of s ’ - worked under so e Fi cher s priva t d ocenten, and, outside of the lectures, probably did not see Fischer himself more than two or three times during their three ’ or a m four years st y in the Ger an capital . At one time or another H . Gideon Wells , the excellent pa thologist of C hicago University, T . B . Osborne , of the Connecticut l o and Experimenta S tati n, the foremost authority on L vegetable proteins , and P . A . evene , D . D . Van S lyke , ll- and W . A . Jacobs, the we known physiological chemists ll of the Rocke fe er Institu te , were his students . Of his many pupils Fischer considered Emil Abderhalden , l now professor of physio ogy at Halle University, a S wiss by birth, the most gifted . ’ l Fischer s death is an irreparab e loss to science . He m a o a s a u se is so uch of our gener ti n th t one he it tes to X superlatives , but one is sorely tempted to speak of him m as the greatest organic che ist of all times .

References

Part of the material ha s been obtained from private l m sources . The a ccount of Fischer in the Nobel vo u e ’ ( 1 ) ha s been of great service . Fischer s work on purines , carbohydrates and proteins has been published in book a m form (2 , 3 , His ddress to the embers of the

English chemical society (5) contains much of interest . ’ mm i w a S e e also 6 . A su ary of F scher s ork on t nnins ha s appeared in English Enzymes are discu sse d in ’ a l Dr . Harrow s rtic e

ermann mil ischer. Les Prix Nobel S tockholm 1 . Anon. : H E F ( ) ,

1 90 2 , p . 58. — ischer : Untersuchun en in der Purin ru e 1 882 1 0 6 2 . Emil F g g pp , 9 r rlin (Juliu s S pringe , Be . i er : Untersu chun en iiber Kohl enh dra e und Fer 3 . Emil F sch g y t — ulius S rin er Berlin. mente, 1884 1 90 8 (J p g , 2 38 EMIL FIS CHER

Un ersu h n en iib er Aminosauren Pol Emil Fischer : t c u g , ypeptide in 1 —1 6 ulius S rin er erlin und Prote s , 899 90 (J p g , B . n he i hemis r in its Rela ion o i lo Emil Fisch er : S y t t cal C t y t t B o gy . on on Journal of the Chemical S ocie ty (L d ) , 91 , 1 749 i R cen Ad ances and Problems in hemi 6 . Emil F sch er : e t v C stry . 8 Na ture (London) , 85 , 55 es Lichin- n e Emil Fischer : S ynthesis of Depsid , S ubsta c s and rnal o the America n hemical S ocie t 36 Tannins. Jou f C y, , 1 1 70 n amin H o : ha are n m es? 8 . Be j arr w W t E zy

2 . March p . 53

2 39 INDEX

' ames of ersons re ri ted in it ics N p a p n al .

Abd d en Auw erhal , 2 33 , 2 34, 2 38 ers, 1 9 1 Abe 1 0 A vo ad ro gg, 3 g , XI, XIV, 64 A A bel, 2 36 yrton, M rs. H ertha , 1 68 A bra ham, 1 1 5 cetoacetic e ster 1 2 adische A i — - - A , B nal n und S od a Fa b A l cety ene , 1 36 rik, 6, 1 5 Acheson 1 8 a ekeland 1 , 4 B , 4, 2 3 5 Adrenalin 2 6 a e er frontis iece 6 1 , 3 B y , p , , 5 , 1 0 0 , A assi 2 1 1 0 1 1 80 1 8 1 1 8 1 g z, 3 , , , 3 , 84 , 1 85 , ldeh des 2 2 1 1 0 1 1 1 2 1 A y , 9 , 9 : 93 , 7, 2 1 9 , 2 2 0 : li arin A z , 8, 1 2 ’ Altho 1 a e er fa fi, 90 B y ctory, 8 Alum in baki a ker 1 ng powders, 2 1 3 B , 45 Al Balar uminum , 1 49 d , 1 42 mino acids 2 0 2 ancro t 1 0 2 A , 3 , 34 B f , 93 , , 1 0 5 , 1 08, 1 2 2 , And er 1 son, 44 3 0 Aniline axter , 6 B , 69

Aniline r l . a liss 2 6 pu p e S ee mauve . B y , 3 An Béc thracene , 9 hamp, 6 Ar o Becler g , 1 45 e, 1 39 Ar on 8 1 ec uerel 1 g , 4 , 44 B q , 60 , 1 6 1 , 1 68

Armstro E . F . 2 ehrin von 2 ng, , 33 B g, , 97 , 1 9 Ar Béhal 1 ms trong, H . E . , 1 3 , 4 Arrhenius 1 2 eils tein frontis iece 1 , XII, XIV, 9 , 9 , 93 , B , p , 5 1 - en amin 2 1 95 , 99 , 1 1 1 33 , 1 53 . 1 67, 1 68 B j , 5

' Art M le on en ene 1 2 , end e efi , 3 4 B z , As mme r c carbon a om en oate of soda 2 1 2 y t i t , 93 . B z , , 2 1 3 S - emi erns tein 1 8 1 ee stereo ch stry . B , 7 , 79 omi B ernthsen 1 At c theory , 1 65 . S ee Dal , 5 , 70 B a thelOt : 35 : 1 1 5 1 1 35 1 I 44 tomic ei 2 2 2 — 1 0 A w ghts, 4 , 5 , 6 64 , 5 66 6 ertholle t 1 2 1 8 : 7, 68: 69 : 7° B , 3 5 , Atom in ertrand 6 s S pace, S tructure of B , 5 book b 8 — er elius 0 ( y 5 88 B z , 7 , 99

INDEX

es 2 2 —2 2 8 2 Enzym , 97 , 5 , 3 1 E l r enmeyer, 1 78, 1 93 De i b enne, 1 63 . E tard , 1 39 D ebra 1 ul y, 44 E er, 1 3 0 D ehérain, 1 38, 1 39 , 1 40 D Ra msa and Youn emu th, 1 9 1 ( y g) , 46 Descartes , 35 Ewan, 93 D e venter 0 , van, 93 , 1 2 , 1 30 Eykman, 93 , 1 2 0 - D e ville S t. laire 1 1 , C , 35 , 4 1 De i Vr y. 57 Fahlberg, 2 1 5 D ewar, 1 44 Diamond r i ion , a t ficial product Falk, 1 2 8 of 1 6 1 6— , 3 , 4 1 48 Farad a y: 8: 1 2 : 3 5 : 76 : 1 1 3 Disinte r tion eor of t a rad 2 g a th y ( Fa ay medal , 3 1 , 50 , 7 , 1 3 0 , 2 3 2 Dissocia ion theor of electro a 1 8 t , y F ts, 2 l i — 2 — 2 yt c, 4 1 1 , 1 1 3 1 1 9 , 1 1 1 3 , Fehling, 1 80 — 1 30 1 3 1 Ditte 1 0 , 5 Ferguson, 44

Dixon: 72 ) 1 45 Dluska 1 ischer E 1 2 , 75 F , XIII, XIV, 3 , 4 , D bbie 6 0 8 1 2 8 1 1 1 e . 44 . 45 . 5 7 . 94 . 9 . 99 . . 9 . 93 . " Dobereiner, 2 5 I 94 : 2 1 7 2 39

us . Dorem , 1 99 Fischer, G , 1 85 , 2 2 1 , 2 2 2

Dorp, van, 1 80 Ifil fiyb 42 : 43 : 2 04

Duisberg, 1 5 Du — mas. 2 5 , 35 . 1 3 5 . 1 40 . 2 33 Fluorine , 1 3 6 , 1 42 1 45

fa car oh drate s Food . S ee ts, b y , r e amino acids ita Ebstein, 1 89 p ot ins, , v

Edlung, 1 1 2 , 1 1 8, 1 2 4 Foo te 1 Ehrhard t, 1 5 , 47 oster 1 Ehrlich, 1 2 9 , 1 59 , 2 1 7 , 2 3 6 F , 3 5 l e oundation eriod in ch em E ectric furnace . S ee furnac , F p ( i electric stry) , XI

Franklin, 1 97 i i n e ra nklin medal dissoc at o , th ory of F , 75 lectrons 1 60 1 6 Frém 1 8 x 1 E , , 3 y, 3 , 43 . 44 o Eli t, 1 08, 1 97 ner f f r riedland er 1 E gy o the utu e, 1 65 F , 4

Engelbach, 2 1 9 INDEX

Hale 1 0 Funk, 2 34 , 4

l i 1 6 1 6 1 Hall . M . 1 Furnace, e ectr c , 3 , 4 , 47, , C , 49

Hall, T. , 2

Haller, 1 4

Hantzsch 1 86 a briel 0 , G , 7 H o arc urt, 52

Gare tt, 40 Hare 1 S ee , 97 Gase s of the atmosphere . Harrow 1 2 inert gases of the atmosph ere . 95 . 39

Hasselberg, 54 Gattermann, 1 87 , 1 91 Has tin s 1 tier g , 7 Gau . I 4. 1 45 . x49 H ehner 6 - 1 , 5 Gay Lussac, 1 1 7, 1 2 3 , 1 35 , 43 n He n a. 49 . 50 . 53 . 1 44 . 1 63 . Gegenbau er, 1 50 1 66 Geikie, 1 50 H elmholt 1 2 2 1 2 2 rmani z, 98, 99 , , 4, 1 5 , Ge um, 2 8, 2 9

1 2 6: I 78: I 90 : 2 33 H elmholt m l 8 ibbs l d 2 z eda , 9 G ( Wil ar ) medal , 75 , 1 3 , H em el 6 2 1 4 p , 5 H end erso L 6 Gibbs n, . J ., 9 , Walco t, 6 1 , 72 , 1 08, 1 97, H ermann 8 1 99 , 7 H erter 1 ibbs , 2 2 G ( Walco t) Laboratory, 72 , H ert 2 1 0 73 y, H ert 6 ild erslee ve z, G , 2 07 H e s G l y e, 1 85 iman, 2 07 , 2 09 Hill 6 1 1 08 ladsto , , G ne, 1 2

Hillebrand . l , W F., 1 6, 48 , 1 0 5 G ucosides, 2 2 8 Hi i tz g, 1 83 Glycine . S ee glycocoll H al t frontis iece l ll j , p G ycoco , 1 2 , 2 3 0 ’ ’ Ho van t fron is iece Gold fi, , t p , XII, enberg, 3 2 XIV 37 : 39 : 4 : 4 Goldschmid : 5 7 : t, 93 , 1 86 1 1 1 1 1 4 , 1 1 8 1 1 9 1 2 0 , 1 2 1 , ol i , , , G g , 1 5 1 1 2 3 , 1 3 1 , 1 3 2 , 1 58, 1 68 , 1 88 , Good wi n, 1 0 7 2 1 9 : 2 2 3 : 2 2 4 Gra e be 0 1 80 1 8 1 0 , 9 . 7 , , 3 , 93 , 2 2 ’ ’ — Hofi, van t, in America, 1 0 2 1 0 8 G raham, 3 5. 2 4 o 2 H fmann, 3 , 7 , 1 78, 1 90 , 2 5 Gra y. 55 H o fmann medal, 1 3 , 1 5 1 reen G , 1 8 Hopkins, 2 34

Grimaux, 1 50 Hortsmann, 1 2 2

G uanine, 2 2 2 H u bner, 1 85 Guld ber g. 45 . 1 30 unnin G g. 57 Huxley, 88, 1 1 7, 1 2 2 , 1 2 7, 2 07 2 43 H x ydro ylamine, 2 2 1

Kohler, 2 1 0

ndi o 2 6 Kolbe I g . 7 . 87 . 88. 89 . 93 n l I do , 2 2 2 nert ases of the atmos here Ko 1 2 I g p , pp, 78, 1 8 , 1 93

8 2 1 . e ar n l Kos 4 , 5 , 44 S e go , he sel, 98, 1 2 8, 2 33

nor anic emis r Kro o I g ch t y, XII p tkin, 33

oni ation . S ee di i ion Kr n 2 I z ssoc at , ypto , 5 theory of electrolytic

Jackson, 6 1 , 1 0 8 i Lact c acid , 2 2 4 ad enbur n i i L g, fro t sp ece, 37, 70 ,

Lanipe, 70 Landol i t, frontisp ece , 70 , 98 J annasch 6 1 1 a n e vin , 5 , 87, 9 1 L g , 1 69 , 1 76

ohnson . . 1 vOiS ier J , S W , 97 La : XI: XIV: 35 : 7 1 : 92 :

Johnson, T. B ., 2 33 1 35 o es nnel La J n , Gri , 69 voisier medal, 1 4

ones H . 8 1 0 2 1 0 Law of mass ac ion 1 0 J , C 9 , , 4 , , t , 3

1 2 2 1 Lead . , 3 0 , S e e radioactive lead

Jones, W., 2 33 Lebeau , 1 53 , 1 54 for sneen fron i ie e 1 Le 3 3 1 g , t sp c , 5 : XIV, 80 : 85 : 86 : 93 :

Joule, 1 00 2 2 3 Le 1 0 Blanc, 3 Le ha telier 1 0 1 1 C , 3 , 45, 49

Kahlenberg, 1 2 2 L ecoq d e Boisboud ron, 1 1 Ka eler 1 81 1 8 1 embert pp , , 4, 86 L , 74 emoine L , 1 45 enard Kekulé, XIV, 82 , 84 , 1 86 , 1 93 , L , 1 50 en 2 2 1 9 L z, 3 Leuckard t Kel vin, 50 , 1 2 4 , 1 2 6 , 1 68, , 1 87 e ene 2 2 I 74 L v , 33 , 38 e wis Ketones, 2 2 1 L , 69 K ’ ie bermann 1 0 1 irchhofi, 1 78, 1 90 L , 9 , 5 , 7 , 1 80 , 83 ,

1 90 : 1 93 . 1 95 . 2 2 0 Kl n 8 ie bi XII 1 2 2 0 2 1 2 2 1 ei , 1 5 L g, , 3 , 3 , 9 , Kli ife ori in of ‘ 1 2 —1 2 8 ngaman, 1 5 L , g , , 5 i ma nn 1 8 1 L pp . 5 . 59

INDEX

tle Pries y, 1 97

b Panspermia , 1 2 4 y 29

Pa vlotf. 1 9. 54

Pellew, 1 0 3 , 1 04 Put in, 2 29

Periodic law . S ee periodic sys

! uincke, 1 9 1 m 1 2 —2 Periodic syste , XII, 9 , 5 9,

Perkin A. G. 1 Radioacti e lea d , , 7 v , 74, 75

Perkin, G. F . , 2 - Per i . H . 1 1 8 k n, W , XII, XIV, ,

Perkin medal , 1 6

Perkin W. H ., 1 7 ’ Perkin s sis 1 1 Raiei h XIV 1 synthe , g , : 3 : 48: 54 : 76 :

Perrin, 1 69 1 1 7 ri n f 1 8 Petroleum, o gi o , 4

Pe tterson, 54 I 6 : 2 9: 36: 74: 98: 1 2 2 :

1 3 1 . x44 . 1 5 1 . 1 53 . 1 54. 1 58.

Phase rule , 97 2 2 4, 2 3 2 en 2 2 2 1 2 t 2 Ph ylhydrazine , 2 0 , , 2 4 Raoul , 9 , 1 0 0 , 2 Physical chemistry, 47 1 3 - Physico chemical period emi r ch st y) , XII l r Phy sio ogical chemist y . S ee iol r e ed 2 b ogical chemist y R , 1 0

Pickering, 1 0 8 Regnault, 2 3

Pinner, 70 Reicher, 93 , 1 2 0 emsen R , XIII, XIV, 1 6 ,

‘- Pitchblende, 1 6 1 1 1 4 : I 97 iN S l Reusch P anck, 70 , 94 , 43 ’ e da Ple tnofi, 2 2 R ymond Bois, 1 79

Pliqu e, 1 38

Poincare, 1 59 , 1 70

Ri hards . . Polonium , 1 62 , 1 74 c , W T , 59

Riess, 1 52 li Polypeptids, 2 3 i B il e t, 1 81 ell Pomeroy, 1 3 Rockef er, 1 06 , 1 0 7 2 46 INDEX

e 2 S mith T. 1 2 2 Rockefeller Institut , 34 , ,

S mith . Romburgh, 1 4 , W , 1 93 1 60 S mithells Rantgen, 97, 1 50 , , 47 2 1 8 Roose velt, 1 08 , 1 53 : 5 : 74 : 75 : 95 : I 63 :

Rosaniline, 7 ’ okolo Roscoe, 2 33 S fi, 1 9 ’ ’ S olution va n t Ho s o Rose, 35 2 1 9 , fi the ry of, 2 Rose s, oil of. S ee scents, 9 : 98 thetic S olutions (book by M end e 2 Ross, 2 3 1 2

o S e cifi olumes 2 R wland , 2 07 p c v , 3 Ro al olle o cien e 2 S o ttiswood e 1 y C ge f S c , p , 3 rin Royal medal , 1 1 , 3 1 , 1 50 S p g. 93 r i Rumford medal , 1 50 S ta l ng, 2 36

Rupe, 1 4 S tas, 64 , 70 ’ ’ o Ruprech t, 2 3 S tassfurt deposits, va n t H fi s or Ru therford , 75 , 1 63 , 1 64 , W k on, 96 , 97 - — 1 76 S tereo ch emistry, 79 , 80 , 85 88 ,

89 : 93 : 1 88 S a ba tier tie lit 6 1 2 , 1 49 S g z, 1 0 , 3

S accharin, 2 0 8 S tock, 1 53 , 1 54

S and meyer, 1 86 S tockton, 60

S a witsch, 2 3 S trecker, 2 0 4 S en — c ts, synthetic, 2 36 , 2 37 S ugars, 2 1 8, 2 2 0 , 2 2 1 , 2 2 2 2 2 4 , ha e S c f r, 1 2 7

S char, 1 81 S urface tension and molecu lar l wei h Ramsa and S hields S chee e, 1 42 , 1 43 g t ( y ) , ’ ch 1 S ifi, 5 47 S chmid t 1 2 , 0 S yl vester, 2 0 7

S cho tten, 1 4 S chukenber er g , 57 Ta ka yama , 1 5 S chul e 1 81 z , Tamma nn, 1 3 0 S churman 1 0 2 , 5 Tannin, 37 S chiitzenber er 1 a d 1 2 g , 50 Tartaric ci , S hields o 2 , 45 Ta yl r, 1 3 0 , 1 2 S ide-chain theor 1 2 2 y , 9 Thé el, 2 3 ir S ed ey, 1 39 S klod owski 1 6 mine 2 2 2 2 2 , 5 , 1 75 Th eobro , , 9

S l ke D . D . va n 1 2 8 hio ene 1 8 1 8 y , , , 2 33 , 2 3 8 T ph , 4 , 7

S mith A . 1 0 6 1 homson 1 1 6 1 1 1 60 1 6 , , , 0 7, 1 0 9 , 1 3 2 , 1 76 T . . 5 . . 5

S mith E . F . rium 1 , , 1 97 Th o , 61 2 47 INDEX

Thorpe, frontispiece , 40 , 1 9 1 , 1 1 94 , 95 Wallach, 84 , 1 86 , 1 91

Wal ter, 1 39

Tild en, 40 , 58 , 1 30 , 2 1 4 ol d T lens, 1 90 War , 1 3 5 ’ oxin and anti-ton n 1 2 Wa tts 1 T , 9 , 93 , 1 94 ransmuta ion of elements We s heid T t , g c er, 1 3 0 l 1 66 Wel s, H . Gid eon, 2 3 8

Trau be, 92 Wells, W., 1 0 3 2 Tra vers, 5 Welsbach, 1 62 e lm e 2 2 2 ile Triph ny ethan , W y, 1 6, 2 1 2 l Troos t, 1 50 Wil , 1 4, 98 l Wil iamson, 1 1 7 rian r le S ee mau e Willstiitter 2 2 0 2 Ty pu p . v , , 35

Wislicenus, 79 , 86 , 87 , 89 , 1 81 Ur a itt 0 e , XIV W , 7 , 98 i t Uric a cid , 2 2 2 , 2 2 9 , 2 3 6 W t e, 3 2 ohler 1 8 2 0 2 0 W , XII, XIV, 5 , 3 , 4 ,

’ ’ ’ va n t Hoj . S ee Hoff, van t Woskrensk 2 ’ y, 3 Vapor Density ( Victor M eyer s Wurster, 1 81 , 1 82 method ) 1 8 , 3 “ 8 2 WW : 57: 5 : 33

Ver u in g , 7 - X rays, 1 60 , 1 64 Veronal , 2 3 5 Xanthine 2 2 2 Vesqu e, 1 39 , 1 40 non mi Xe 5 Vita ne , 2 34

Volhard , 2 0 3

Vries, Hugo d e, 1 3 1 , 1 53

2 48