PAUL C. FREER, CHEMIST. 
t • 
XXX Vll 
of aceto-acetic ether, when he found that acetone, a substance 
containing no methylene group, was capable of forming a sodium 
derivative, the reactions of which were similar in nearly every 
respect to those of sodium aceto-acetic ether. This reaction 
proved to be a general one shown by other ketones as well 
as acetic aldehyde. 
In 1898 he completed a most interesting piece of work on the 
constitution of phenylhydrazones. Some of the compounds pre- 
pared were very difficult to handle and were made in Michigan 
4 
during the winter when the thermometer was about 20^ below 
zero. The oxidation of acetone p-bromphenylhydrazone to 
p-brombenzene azo-isopropylene was especially troublesome, re- 
quiring careful handling even at this low temperature, and on 
m 
several different occasions when our laboratories in the Bureau 
of Science were unusually warm. Doctor Freer brought up this 
subject with me and took delight in discussing the difficulties we 
would experience in trying to produce this reaction in Manila. 
During this period, before his arrival in Manila, in addition 
to the 14 articles on ketones and aldehydes referred to. Doctor 
Freer also published papers on **The Saponification of Substi- 
tuted Acetic Ester, Tetrinic Acid, The Constitution of Some 
Derivatives of Formic Acid, Distillation in Vacuum, Formamide, 
Jamaica Dogwood, Organic Peroxides, the Action of Acids on- 
Metals, and Halogen Substitution Products of Aliphatic Acids,'* 
and two textbooks, one The Elements of Chemistry and the 
other Descriptive Inorganic General Chemistry. These books 
are very highly regarded both from a chemical and literary 
standpoint. 
From 1901 to 1912, a period of a little over ten years spent 
in the Philippines, Doctor Freer found that, on account of his 
administrative duties in connection with the Bureau of Science 
and the Medical School, and his editorial work on the Philippine 
Journal of Science, his personal application to research was 
impossible, a fact which he regretted deeply. Nevertheless he 
found time to write a number of articles descriptive of the 
work of these institutions, and his address given at the com- 
mencement exei'cises of the Philippine Medical School, Feb- 
