SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 



565 



SCIENTIFIC LITEEATUEE. 



BIOGRAPHIES OF EMINENT 

 CHEMISTS. 



The literature of chemistry has 

 recently been enriched by several biog- 

 raphies of chemists and by carefully 

 edited works reproducing the letters 

 that passed between certain chemists; 

 the importance and value of these vol- 

 umes is enhanced by the reflection that 

 the history of the lives of the leading 

 men in a growing science constitutes 

 the most complete history of the sci- 

 ence in that period during which they 

 labored, and their lives and labors are 

 rellected in their letters. These notions 

 are appreciated by most of the editors 

 of tlie correspondence we have in mind, 

 and they make their tasks of double 

 value by introducing numerous biblio- 

 graphic and explanatory notes. 



No student of the progress of chem- 

 istry in France during the second 

 quarter of the century just closed can 

 acquire a full and correct knowledge of 

 the subject without a perusal of the 

 life of Charles Gerhardt, edited by his 

 son (bearing the same name), and by 

 Edouard Grimaux (Paris, 1900). In 

 his short life of only forty years, Ger- 

 hardt introduced ideas into chemistry 

 that were at first thought to be revolu- 

 tionary, but were eventually adopted 

 even by his adversaries; his services to 

 organic chemistry were of the highest 

 importance; he first doubled the atomic 

 weights of carbon, oxygen and sulfur, 

 divided acids according to their 

 basicity, and completely established the 

 individuality of the equivalent, the 

 atom and the molecule. 



Of a very different type was his con- 

 temporary living across the Rhine, 

 Schonbein, whose life has been sym- 

 pathetically written by his successor in 

 the University chair. Dr. Geo. W. A. 



Kahlbaum (Leipzig, 1899-1901,2 vols.). 

 The painstaking, indefatigable dis- 

 coverer of ozone, of gun-cotton, of col- 

 lodion, and of the passive state of 

 iron, forms a strong contrast to the 

 brilliant, keen-sighted investigator in 

 organic chemistry, Gerhardt. Schon- 

 bein's busy yet uneventful life reaped 

 but a paltry reward for a discovery 

 that subsequently brought the Swe- 

 dish manufacturer a colossal fortune; 

 but none knew better than Schonbein 

 that the reward sought by the investi- 

 gator in the chemical laboratory is 

 success in wresting from nature her 

 hidden truths. 



Schonbein was a voluminous writer 

 of letters; Dr. Kahlbaum made a col- 

 lection of over 1,600, besides 350 printed 

 papers, and analyzed them carefully in 

 compiling the volumes named. One of 

 his most regular and valued corre- 

 spondents was Faraday, and the letters 

 interchanged with him have been pub- 

 lished in another volume edited by Dr. 

 Kahlbaum and Francis V. Darbishire 

 (Basle and London, 1899). These let- 

 ters number 155 and cover the period 

 from 1836 to 1862, beginning with a 

 letter from Schonbein announcing the 

 peculiar behavior of iron in nitric acid 

 of a certain strength, and ending with 

 a brief note from Faraday that pain- 

 fully discloses his mental distress. The 

 first mention of a ' phosphorus smell 

 developed by electricity ' occurs in a 

 letter to Faraday dated April 4, 1840, 

 and the exciting cause of this odor 

 occupies some part of nearly every let- 

 ter to Faraday during the succeeding 

 twenty-two years. 



Dr. Kahlbaum, with others, has pub- 

 lished ' Twenty Letters,' exchanged by 

 Schonbein and Berzelius in the years 

 1836 to 1847 (Basle, 1898), and the 



