194 GREAT MEN OF SCIENCE 



Europe. On these occasions he always took with him a 

 small travelling laboratory, and ideas for work never forsook 

 him. In the year 1820 he was chosen President of the Royal 

 Society, which he regarded as the highest possible dis- 

 tinction, since Newton had once filled this position. After 

 about the year 1826 his powers began to decline; he again 

 sought for recovery in long voyages which were by preference 

 to Italy, the Tyrol, and Switzerland; fishing in the Alpine 

 streams was one of his favourite amusements. But recovery 

 was not to be his lot; he died on his way home, in Geneva, 

 only fifty-one years of age. , 



Berzelius was born in East Gothland, where his father was 

 head of the school. He studied medicine and chemistry in 

 Upsala, obtained his medical doctorate in 1802, with a work 

 on the efi^ects of Volta's pile on organic substances, and then 

 became a doctor and, later, teacher of chemistry. His work, 

 like that of Davy, was by no means confined to the chemical 

 effects of the voltaic battery, but covered the whole of 

 chemistry. But Berzelius was more inclined to exact quan- 

 titative work, and was thus allied, say, to Klaproth. Thus 

 Berzelius was the first to develop methods of obtaining the 

 quantitative composition of vegetable substances consisting 

 of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, following paths opened up 

 by Lavoisier and Gay-Lussac. Never since the time of 

 Scheele, surely, had a man of science been in possession 

 of such a store of knowledge as was Berzelius. Since 1807, 

 in his capacity of professor of chemistry in Stockholm, he had 

 trained a large number of pupils, who continued to advance 

 chemistry after his manner.^ 



He perfected Dalton's tables of atomic weight with con- 

 tinually increasing accuracy, and he invented the method, 

 quite general to-day, of using letters as symbols for atoms, 



^ Davy had one pupil only, who however was a host in himself: Fara- 

 day. It was later said that Faraday was Davy's greatest discovery. 



