2 26 Alexander Pctrunkevitch, Ph.D., 



Alexander Michailovitch Butlerov, born in 1828 and for many 

 3^ears professor in St. Petersburg, created a whole school of 

 chemistry. He wrote a celebrated book entitled "Introduction 

 to a Complete Mastery of Organic Chemistry" and dozens of 

 special articles dealing- with the derivation and structure espe- 

 cially of isomeric alcohols and hydrocarbons. It may be added 

 that he was also an expert in bee-keeping and wrote a popular 

 book on "The Bee : Its Life and the Rules for Rational Bee- 

 Keeping," published in a cheap edition in 1871 and reprinted 

 repeatedly. He was also interested in the occult questions of 

 spiritism and achieved quite a fame in this field much to the 

 dismay of his more materialistic colleagues. 



Feodor Feodorovitch Beilstein, born in St. Petersburg in 1838, 

 is sufficiently well known to foreigners as one of the most dis- 

 tinguished students of organic chemistry, wdio usually consider 

 him to be a German because he wrote in German. Yet he lived 

 all his life in Russia where he was professor, spoke Russian and 

 considered himself and was considered by his students a Russian. 

 At least I remember him as such presiding over the examination 

 in chemistry which I myself had to take in Moscow. The best 

 known of his works is his "Handbuch der Organischen Chemie," 

 the standard reference book on the subject, but he has published 

 many special articles on aromatic compounds, on Russian petro- 

 leum, on molecular rearrangement, etc. 



Nicholai Alexandrovitch Menshutkin, born in 1842. in St. 

 Petersburg, a pupil of the Russian chemist N. N. Sokoloff and of 

 the Germans Strecker, Wuertz and Kolbe, is best known by his 

 textbook of analytical chemistry, printed in 1871, reprinted since 

 that time in many editions and translated into three foreign lan- 

 guages, but not less valuable is his "Lectures in Organic Chem- 

 istry" also published in many editions. His earlier work was 

 on the synthesis and properties of carbamides, but later he was 

 more interested in the question of the relation between isomeric 

 alcohols and acids and esters, and received a prize for this work 

 in 1878. Since the foundation of the Russian Chemical Society 

 in 1868 Menshutkin was closely associated with it and was the 

 editor of its journal. The British Association for the Advance- 

 ment of Science elected him corresponding member, A complete 

 list of his papers may be found in the second volume of the Bio- 

 graphical Dictionary of the University of St. Petersburg. He 



