TEE PRUSSIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 85 



during the period from 1786 to 1812 it numbered thirty-two mathe- 

 maticians and naturalists among its members. Gerhard, mineralogist 

 and chemist; the elder Walter, the anatomist; Achard, the chemist, 

 were of Frederick the Great's time. Ferber, though in the academy 

 only a short period, was the founder of modern geognosy. Some of 

 these men did a great deal to increase the usefulness and fame of the 

 academy. Yet there was no mathematician in its ranks equal to Euler 

 or Lagrange. Willdenow, nephew of Gleditsch, in charge of the botanic 

 garden, though dying at the early age of forty-seven, carried out and 

 improved his uncle's plans. Bursdorf laid the foundations of the 

 science of forestry, from which Germany has received such rich re- 

 turns. Though Prussia was far behind in her knowledge of chemistry, 

 Klaproth, through the academy, did a great deal for the science by 

 introducing correct opinions in regard to its nature and by improving 

 the methods of its study. As an independent analytical chemist he 

 proved to be one of the most famous chemists of his time, inferior only 

 to Berzelius of Sweden. He discovered four new elements. Alexander 

 von Humboldt, traveler and scientist, an author of world-wide fame, 

 Leopold von Buch, the first geognosist of the century, and hardly less 

 famous than Humboldt, and Buttmann, the grammarian, belong to that 

 group of scholars, thinkers, investigators and writers who laid the 

 foundations upon which the fame of German scholarship in the last 

 century largely rests. The change which had taken place in the spirit 

 and aims of the academy within the period under review, typical as it 

 was of the change which had taken place in the universities and in the 

 nation, was that of a generation. A new era had dawned, an era which 

 was ready to extend a hearty welcome to new men, new methods of 

 studv and research, a new life, a new and more accurate scholarship. 



