THE rUOGBESS OF SCIENCE 



475 



THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE 



BERT HE LOT AXD M0I88AN 



In the deaths of Berthelot and 

 Moissan, France has lost its most 

 illustrious chemists and the world two 

 of its leading men of science. At the 

 celebration held at the Sorbonne in 

 1901 in honor of the jubilee of the 

 scientific work of Berthelot, Moissan 

 said in his address : " As soon as you 

 touch a question you extend it by 

 generalizing it." The two great chem- 

 ists indeed typify the changing condi- 

 tions of scientific performance and of 

 the scientific career. The more than 

 a thousand publications of Berthelot 

 cover a great part of the field of chem- 

 istry ranging from minute researches 

 to the widest generalizations. He was 

 a historian, an archeologist, a man of 

 letters, an educational administrator 

 and a statesman as well as a chemist. 

 Moissan, on the other hand, obtained 

 eminence by methods which it appears 

 must become more common with the 

 increasing specialization of science — 



intensive work in a comparatively nar- 

 row field. 



Marcelin Pierre Eugene Berthelot 

 was born eighty years ago, the son 

 of a physician. His first scientific 

 work, published in 1850, was on a 

 method of liquefying gases. His thesis 

 for the doctorate was on glycerine and 

 the fats, opening up important ques- 

 tions in organic chemistry, which he 

 followed by his work in synthesizing 

 fundamental organic compounds, such 

 as alcohol, acetylene and benzene. 

 Berthelot then spent fifteen years 

 attempting to lay the foundation of 

 chemical mechanics by a study of the 

 heat changes involved in chemical re- 

 actions. While all his principles have 

 j not been accepted, this work is one 

 | of the most important in the history 

 j of chemistry, both as regards detailed 

 I discoveries and broad generalizations. 

 One of its incidental results was his 

 study of explosives and the theory of 

 ] explosion. Berthelot next turned his 



Plaque Struck in Honor of Berthelot on the Occasion of the Jubilee 



of His_Scientific Work. 



