832 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



His early philological studies enabled him rapidly to master the 

 intricacies of the English language, so that he became a fluent speaker 

 and a correct writer in our tongue. Several of his works have appeared 

 in English first, and subsequently been translated into German. 



His reputation as one of the most successful teachers of chemistry 

 of the present day brought him many offers from German govern- 

 ments, for at that time he stood almost alone as a teacher of organic 

 chemistry according to modern ideas. In 1862 he was called to Bonn, 

 where he undertook the building of a fine chemical laboratory, but he 

 was not permitted to finish his undertaking, for in 1803 he was ap- 

 pointed the successor to Mitscherlich at the Frederick William Uni- 

 versity in Berlin. 



His first work in Berlin likewise consisted in the planning, erecting, 

 and equipping of a new chemical laboratory, which was opened in 1868. 

 It consists of a substantial brick edifice, built in the form of a hollow 

 square, in the center of which is a large, airy, and well-lighted lecture- 

 room, capable of seating about two hundred students. Two large 

 courts, one on each side of the lecture-room, afford abundant light 

 to the various work-rooms, laboratories, and smaller lecture-rooms. 

 The entire structure occupies a lot of ground one hundred and forty 

 by one hundred and sixty-five feet on Georgen Strasse, with an ex- 

 tension seventy feet wide running through to the Dorothean Strasse. 

 On the latter are the library and residence of the professor. The situ- 

 ation is a central one, near the principal station of the elevated rail- 

 road (Stadtbahn), and but five minutes' walk from the university 

 building on Unter den Linden. 



Professor Hofmann's lectures are illustrated by very elaborate ex- 

 periments, and the fundamental laws of the science are demonstrated 

 by means of apparatus devised by himself for this special purpose. 

 No other living chemist, Bunsen perhaps excepted, has invented so 

 many new and useful forms of lecture apparatus as Hofmann. Besides 

 his earlier papers on this subject, a season rarely passes, even now, 

 without some new contribution to this kind of literature from his 

 fertile pen. His lectures are so interesting, his manner so animated, 

 that his lecture-room is thronged with students from all parts of the 

 globe. 



Soon after his removal to Berlin, Professor Hofmann founded the 

 German Chemical Society, of which he has several times been presi- 

 dent, and the growth of which has been largely due to his efforts. 

 Although German in name and in language, it numbers among its 

 twenty-seven hundred members persons of every nation where chemis- 

 try is cultivated, and its proceedings are the chief means of commu- 

 nication between a large portion of the chemists of this and other 

 countries. The number of original papers published by it is larger 

 than that of the English, French, and American chemical societies 

 combined. 



