SKETCH OF AUGUST KEKULE. 403 



capital school to encourage independent thought. The wish was ex- 

 pressed that I should stay in England and become a technologist, but 

 I was too much attached to home. I wished to teach in a German 

 university. But where? In order to get acquainted with the cir- 

 cumstances at several universities, I became a traveling student. In 

 this capacity I came, among other universities, to Bonn. Here there 

 was no chemist of eminence, and hence there were no prospects. 

 Nowhere did there seem so much promise and so great a future as at 

 Heidelberg. I could ask no help of Bunsen. ' I can do nothing for 

 you,' he said, ' at least not openly. I will not stand in your way, 

 but more I can not promise.' I fitted up a small private laboratory 

 in the principal street of Heidelberg at the house of a corn mer- 

 chant — Gross, by name — a single room with an adjoining kitchen. 

 I took a few pupils, among whom was Baeyer. In our little kitchen 

 I finished my work on fulminate of silver, while Baeyer carried out 

 the researches, which subsequently became famous, on cacodyl. 

 That the walls were coated thick with arsenious acid, and that silver 

 fulminate is explosive, we took no thought about. After two years 

 and a half I received a call to Ghent as ordinary professor. There 

 I stayed nine years, and had to lecture in French. With me to 

 Ghent came Baeyer. Through the kindness of the then Prime Min- 

 ister of Belgium, Rogier, I obtained the means to establish a small 

 laboratory. I had there with me a number of students, among 

 whom I may name Baeyer, Hiibner, Ladenburg, Wichelhaus, Linne- 

 mann, Radzizewski. There was not so much a systematic course 

 of instruction as a free and pleasant academic intercourse. After 

 nine years' work I received the call to Bonn." Professor Kekule 

 concluded his address with some account of his work at Bonn, and of 

 the great attention he had always received from his pupils. For a 

 full account of Kekule's scientific career and achievements, we are 

 indebted to the memorial address made by President Landelt to the 

 German Chemical Society on the occasion of his death, of which we 

 translate the more important passages from the BericMe: 



" The works which Kekule has left behind him belong, as we all 

 know, to the bases of all chemistry. His teachings have so passed 

 into our flesh and blood that it seems almost superfluous to remind 

 a circle of professional chemists of them. I shall be able to present 

 only in the most general outlines this evening the immense influ- 

 ence which the dead master has exercised upon science; a complete 

 view of all his labors is a subject for a biography, which we must 

 wait for. 



" Kekule's scientific work began in 1854, with the discovery of 

 thiacetic acid, by which he at once separated from the old school of 

 chemistry that was still prevailing, and, founding a new one, revealed 



