1900.] Sir Henry Boscoe on Btmsen. 437 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING. 



Friday, June 1, 1900. 



Ludwig Mond, Esq., Ph.D. F.R.S., Vice-President, in the Chair. 



Sir Henry Eosooe, Ph.D. D.C.L. LL.D. F.R.S. 



Bunsen. 



I hope that none of my audience will fall into the mistake of con- 

 fusing the chemist Bunseu with the chevalier of the same name. 

 This happened at a garden party when I was present, at the late 

 Mr. Gassiot's in 1862, and at which Bunsen and Kirchhotf were 

 honoured guests. A lady addressing the former, asked, ' Pray sir, 

 have you yet completed your great work on God in History ? " Alas ! 

 no," replied the chemist, with the genial humour which was one of 

 his chief attractions, " Alas ! no, madam, my untimely death prevented 

 me from completing my task." 



For more than fifty years, Bunsen, the great investigator, the 

 great teacher, devoted himself solely to the advancement of his 

 science. Born in a German university town, Gottingen, in 1811, he 

 spent his life in discharging the quiet duties of a German University 

 Professor ; dying in August, 1899, at Heidelberg. To such men, 

 life passes away in an outwardly uneventful manner. A scientific 

 excursion to Iceland, or holiday visits to Italy or Switzerland, may 

 occasionally break the monotony of the yearly recurring course of 

 lectures, or of the still more tiresome perfunctory duties of a Uni- 

 versity Examiner. But the inner life of a man like Bunsen, is full 

 of events of great and even of phenomenal interest. The discovery 

 of a fact which changes or overthrows our ideas on a whole branch 

 of science ; the experimental proof of a law hitherto unrecognised ; 

 the employment of known facts in a new and happy combination to 

 effect results of general applicability and usefulness : these are some 

 of the peaceful victories of the man of science, which may by many 

 seem to outweigh the popular achievements of the more public pro- 

 fessions. Such things come to all in greater or lesser degree — who, 

 like Bunsen, devote themselves unselfishly and completely to the 

 furtherance of the knowledge of nature — and to him they came in 

 rich abundance. 



To give more than an idea of the unbroken scientific work of 

 half a century in sixty minutes is an impossible task. I must there- 

 fore content myself with referring to a few of the more salient points 

 of Bunsen's discoveries, and attempt, in I fear a most incomplete way, 



