SKETCH OF CHARLES ADOLPHE WURTZ. 115 



ward filled the position of chief of the chemical department in the 

 School of Arts and Manufactures from 1846 to 1851, and was made a 

 fellow in 1846. He gained his first independent position in 1851, as 

 professor in the Agricultural Institute at Versailles. After the death 

 of Orfila, in 1853, and the retirement of Dumas, in 1854, the chairs 

 which they had filled were united in the chair of Medical Chemistry, 

 and Professor Wurtz was made its occupant. In 1866 he became 

 Dean of the Medical Faculty, and gained much credit as such by his 

 firm and moderate course during the troubles with the students in 1867 

 and 1868, when the best professors in the faculty were denounced to 

 the Senate. He resigned this office in April, 1875, and was appointed, 

 in the following August, Professor of Organic Chemistry in the Fac- 

 ulty of Sciences. He has also been a member of the hygienic com- 

 mittee, a member and secretary of the Chemical Society, and a member 

 of the Philomathic Society. 



The chemical researches of Professor Wurtz have been numerous, 

 original, and important. The Royal Society's catalogue contains a 

 list of seventy-three titles to papers which were published by him pre- 

 vious to 1864. The publication of his investigations was begun in 

 1842, with a paper on the constitution of the hypophosphites. This was 

 followed by researches on phosphorous acid, sulpho-phosphoric acid, 

 etc., which greatly added to our knowledge of the phosphorus com- 

 pounds. It was during his experiments on the hypophosphites that 

 he discovered the hydride of copper, a substance which derives in- 

 terest from its own peculiarities, as well as on account of the rarity of 

 metallic hydrides. Professor Wurtz's next researches were directed 

 to the cyanic and cyanuric ethers, and brought forth, among other re- 

 sults, the discovery, in 1849, of the so-called compound ammonias 

 formed by the displacement of one of the atoms of hydrogen in am- 

 monia, by organic radicals like methyl and ethyl. A third important 

 investigation, published in 1855, resulted in the confirmation of the 

 theory of Laurent, Gerhardt, and Hoffmann, of the double nature of 

 the alcohol radicals that the substances obtained from alcohol as 

 radicals were not the simple radicals, but were compounds of those 

 radicals with themselves. This has afforded one of the strongest ar- 

 guments in favor of the view now generally entertained by chemists, 

 that free hydrogen is a compound of hydrogen with hydrogen. Other 

 investigations, which must enter into the summing up of the work of 

 Professor Wurtz in this line, are those on the glycols, and on ethylene 

 oxide ; on the action of nascent hydrogen on aldehyde ; on the action 

 of chlorine on aldehyde ; on the action of hydrochloric acid on alde- 

 hyde ; on the synthesis of neurine ; and on abnormal vapor den- 

 sities. 



In 1864 he was awarded, at the instance of the Academy of Sci- 

 ences, the Emperor's biennial prize of twenty thousand francs. Two 

 years afterward, or in 1867, he was elected a member of the Academy, 



