Russia's Contribution to Science. 225 



desire is to recall to the memory of those who have always 

 admired Russia and of those who have lately lightly condoned 

 the destruction of Russian universities by fanatics and adven- 

 turers under the pretext that Russian men of science serve not 

 the proletariat but wealthy bourgeois alone, to recall to their mem- 

 ory the great service rendered by Russia. And for this purpose 

 I shall dwell only on a few of the natural sciences and mention 

 only the most important work done. 



Uppermost in my mind is chemistry, that particular science 

 for which lately the Germans more than other nationalities were 

 admired. But Voskresensky, Zinin, Beketov, Butlerov, Beilstein, 

 Mendelejeff, ]\Ienshutkin — what a cluster of names of which any 

 country may justly be proud ! Although LomonossoiT had been 

 the first to teach chemistry and created the first chemical labora- 

 tory, the "Grandfather of Chemistry in Russia" is usually con- 

 sidered to be and is known under that endearing nickname Alex- 

 ander Abramovitch Voskresensky, born in 1809 in the city of 

 Torjok. in the Government of Twer. He was the teacher of 

 Mendelejeff who always spoke of him with reverence and 

 admiration. His works were numerous and covered a wide field 

 of research. He studied various reactions of sulphuric anhy- 

 dride. But his chief work was in organic chemistry. He was 

 the first to discover and describe the quinones, to elucidate the 

 chemical structure of naphthalene, to find theobromine in choco- 

 late. Xicolai Nicolaevitch Zinin, born in 1812 in the Caucasus 

 and professor of chemistry in St. Petersburg from 1847 to his 

 death in 1880, was so distinguished in organic chemistry, espe- 

 cially through his exhaustive investigations of benzene and its 

 derivatives, that he was elected corresponding member of the acad- 

 emies of Paris and Berlin and of the London Chemical Society, 

 He discovered naphthylamine (he called it naphthylidam), and 

 described the preparation of amines from nitro compounds with 

 the aid of hydrogen sulphide, a reaction of great importance in 

 the production of modern aniline dyes, and still referred to as 

 Zinin's reduction. 



Nicolai Nicolaievitch Beketov, born in 1827, was one of the 

 first theoretical chemists of his time, at a time when theoretical 

 chemistry was not yet in vogue, and was particularly interested in 

 the problem of chemical affinity which he made the subject of 

 a number of articles. 



