706 EXPERIMENT STATION EECORD. 



Berthelot was born in Paris October 25, 1827. Early in life he 

 aowed marked taste for philosophical studies and chemical research, 

 and during the more than fifty years of his unusually active and prb- 

 ductive scientific career, beginning practically with the enunciation 

 of his theory of polyatomic alcohols in 1854, his work has covered 

 nearly every branch of chemistry and included besides many impor- 

 tant contributions to physics, botan3% and agriculture. Indeed his 

 scientific work is preeminently distinguished by its breadth of con- 

 ception and the boldness and success with which he made all depart- 

 ments of science concerned contribute to the investigations he under- 

 took, thus attesting an extraordinary breadth of knowledge and sure- 

 ness of grasp of science in many fields. To an unusual degree he 

 made science in its various departments subservient to his purpose in 

 Avorking out the particular j^roblem which he had under investigation. 



Berthelot's philosophy and science was of that constructive kind 

 so well exemplified by those researches in synthesis of organic 

 compounds beginning in 1854 and continuing to the end of his 

 career, which give him his strongest title to fame. When he began 

 his work in this line Wohler had already j^repared urea synthetically 

 from its inorganic constituents, and a few other syntheses of similar 

 character had been made, but, as a recent writer states, " they were so 

 isolated, so insignificant, and so barren of fruit that all attempts to 

 constitute organic bodies by bringing together the elements of which 

 they are composed were as a rule regarded as chimerical." Yet 

 Berthelot attacked this problem with such energy that in a compara- 

 tively short time he greatly increased the number of synthetically 

 })repared organic compounds entering into the composition of living 

 organisms, and elucidated the laws and devised a system of processes 

 by which organic compounds may be formed from inorganic elements. 

 In fact it may be said that he introduced the synthetic method into 

 organic chemistry. 



Among the important compounds thus prepared by him were 

 oxalic and formic acids, method alcohol, glycerine, camphor, oils, and 

 acetylene. The ultimate aim of his eii'orts in this direction was the 

 production of albuminous and carbohydrate bodies, of which he 

 said: "The reconstitution of the saccharine and albuminoid prin- 

 cii)les is the final object of organic chemistry, the most remote one 

 indeed, but also one of the most important, on account of the essential 

 part which these principles play in our economy. When science 

 attains it, it will be able to realize the synthetic problem in its whole 

 extent — that is, to produce, with the elements and by the play of 

 molecular forces alone, all the definite natural compounds and all 

 the changes which matter undergoes in the bodies of living beings." 



Berthelot expressed the belief that the synthesis of the food nutri- 

 ents, fats, and sugars will probably be followed by the artificial prep- 



