NOTES 



Prof. Adolf von Baeyer (Frederick A. Mason, B.A., Ph.D.) 



Chemists the world over will learn with regret of the death of the famous 

 Professor of Organic Chemistry, Adolf von Baeyer, who has just died in Munich 

 in his eighty-second year. 



His full official title was Seiner Exzellenz Geheimrath Professor Doktor Adolf 

 Ritter von Baeyer, but he was known familiarly to at least two generations of 

 chemists in every land simply as " Baeyer," and he may without fear of contra- 

 diction be regarded as one of the founders of modern organic chemistry. 



His researches and those of his pupils into the inner mysteries of synthetic 

 organic chemistry were so profound, so widespread, and so fundamental that it is 

 safe to say that organic chemistry as we know it — the chemistry of life and vital 

 products, and of synthetic dyes, drugs, high explosives, and the like — would have 

 been impossible if Baeyer had not laid the foundations both by his numerous 

 researches and by the training he gave to the many distinguished chemists who 

 passed thiough his hands. In the technical world too, both by his teaching and 

 his activities in the laboratory, he assisted in a marked degree to assure the 

 unique position which Germany held before the war in chemical industry. 



It is sufficient to note that he was the first chemist to synthesise indigo from 

 coal-tar products, and so to open the way to Germany's successful competition 

 with natural indigo. This achievement alone would have sufficed to assure his 

 fame throughout the world, but indeed that rests on a broader basis than this one 

 success. 



Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Adolf Baeyer was born on October 31, 1835, as tne 

 son of Staff-Major (later Lieut. -Colonel) J. J. Baeyer and Eugenie his wife, at 

 242 Friedrich Str. Berlin. From early days he was attracted by chemistry, and 

 even at the age of nine we find him discovering a new compound of soda and 

 copper carbonate, and delivering lectures of a sort to a school-boy friend who, in 

 return for this honour, undertook to clean the bottles ! 



Von Baeyer studied at Berlin University for a time, and from there he went to 

 Heidelberg in 1856 to work with "Papa" Bunsen, and there made the acquaint- 

 ance of many well-known chemists, such as Roscoe, L. Meyer, Beilstein, and 

 others : after a short time, however, he transferred his allegiance to Kekule, who 

 was also teaching in Heidelberg and later in Ghent. In 1858 Baeyer went to 

 Berlin for his final examination, where he had to be content with a " second." He 

 then stayed at Berlin as a privat-docent for some years, coming thus under the 

 influence of A. W. von Hofmann, who had left the Royal College of Chemistry in 

 London— largely on account of the unscientific and unsympathetic attitude of the 

 British public — to accept the professorial chair in Berlin in 1865 (in passing it 

 will be remembered that it was in 1856 that Hofmann's pupil, W. H. Perkin, 

 discovered mauve, the first aniline dye), and shortly after Hofmann appointed 

 Baeyer as Professor Extraordinarius. In 1868 Baeyer married the daughter of 

 Geh. Bindemann. 



In 1872 Baeyer was called to Strassburg as Professor of Chemistry and 

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