278 PEOCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



Professor Rankine was made a member of the Institution of Civil 

 Engineers in 1843, of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1849, of the 

 Pliilosophical Society of Glasgow in 1852, of the Royal Society of 

 London in 1853, and of this Academy in 1866. The degree of LL.D. 

 was conferred upon him in 1856 by Trinity College, Dublin. 



Professor Rankine was of middle stature and of muscular frame, 

 with a frank and cordial bearing; and his noble head, crowned with a 

 profusion of curling brown hair, impressed one as having the stamp 

 of genius. He loved music. 



Justus Liebig was born at Darmstadt, on the 13th of May, 1803. 

 He was educated at the Gymnasium in that city ; and, after an appren- 

 ticeship of ten months to an apothecary, he entered the University of 

 Bonn, and afterward that of Erlangen. At the age of nineteen, he 

 began an investigation of fulminating silver ; and, his remarkable 

 promise attracting the attention of the Grand Duke, he was sent by 

 him to Paris, then the centre of scientific investigation. There, through 

 the introduction of Humboldt, he obtained admission to Gay Lussac's 

 laboratory, where he completed his first investigation of fulminic acid. 

 In 1824 he returned home, and was appointed Extraordinary, and two 

 years afterward Ordinary, Professor at Giessen, where he began and 

 where he ended his magnificent scientific career. It would be useless 

 to enumerate his memoirs. For nearly thirty years he poured forth 

 scientific papers of extraordinary brilliancy, novelty, and variety of 

 interest. In inorganic chemistry he did little ; but in organic chem- 

 istry he was loug the leader. He saw early in the history of that 

 branch of science the immense richness and extent of the field to be 

 cultivated, and he worked in it as no single man had worked before 

 him. The list of his published papers includes nearly four hundred 

 separate titles. He so far perfected the methods of organic analysis 

 that an accurate determination of the carbon and hych'ogen of an 

 organic body requires hardly an hour's work ; and his method, with a 

 few changes, is still in use. With the older proces>es, Berzelius spent 

 years on the analysis of a few organic acids alone. The laboratory at 

 Giessen now became the leading chemical school in Europe. Liebig 

 had an extraordinary power of drawing out young men, of encouraging 

 them, and of stimulating to the utmost their intellectual powers. He 

 had a remarkable personal magnetism. Three or four times a day he 

 walked through his laboratory, stopping to talk with each student, fix- 

 ing on him his earnest eyes, and questioning him sharply on his work. 

 His mind teemed with suooestions ; he left nothina' as he found it. No 



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