Carl Schorlenu/ier. igi 



Memoir of the late Carl Schorlemmer, LL.D., F.R.S.. 

 F.C.S. By Harold B. Dixon, M.A., F.R.S., Pro 

 fessor of Chemistry at the Owens College. 



(Received March 21st, iSpj.) 



Carl Schorlemmer was born at Darmstadt, in 1834. He 

 studied chemistry in his native town, and afterwards at 

 Giessen. At the age of twenty-four he came to Manchester 

 as private assistant to Professor Roscoe, and three years 

 afterwards was appointed Demonstrator in Chemistry at the 

 Owens College. His first research work, as assistant, was 

 the determination of the composition of the haloid acids 

 when their aqueous solutions were distilled under different 

 pressures. In 1861 he began his investigations on the 

 constitution of the light paraffin oils, which led him to 

 question the accepted view that there were two series of 

 isomeric bodies — the alcohol radicals, e.^., ' methyl,' ' ethyl,' 

 etc., and the hydrides of the radicals, e.^., hydride of ethyl, 

 hydride of butyl, etc. 



The researches of Kolbe and Frankland between 1848 

 and 1850 led to the recognition of several new hydro- 

 carbons. Free " methyl " was obtained by the electrolysis 

 of acetic acid, and by the decomposition of methyl iodide 

 by zinc, and, secondly, a body of similar composition called 

 ' hydride of ethyl ' by the action of zinc upon ethyl iodide in 

 presence of water. In 1850 Frankland wrote: — 



" I have described two separate series of hydrocarbons 

 isomeric with each other, the one consisting of the bodies which 

 I consider to be alcohol-radicals, and the other containing the 

 members of the marsh-gas family, which I regard, from the mode 

 in which they are formed, as the hydrides of these radicals, thus : 



