035 



GMELIN, LEOPOLD. 



GRAHAM, THOMAS. 



Senor do Gayangos has almost ceased to contribute directly to English 

 literature. In Spanish he has written interesting articles in the 

 ' Seinanario Pintoresco,' the ' Revista de ainbos Mundos,' and other 

 periodicals. He is a member of the Spanish Royal Academy of History, 

 and besides contributing to its ' Transactions,' edits the ' Memorial 

 historico Espanol," a collection of ancient historical documents issued 

 in the name of the Academy. 



GMELIN, LEOPOLD, an eminent chemist and contributor to the 

 literature of the science of which he was an equally eminent academic 

 teacher, belonged to a family which for four generations had been 

 actively engaged in the pursuit of chemistry, the medical sciences, and 

 several branches of natural history, and one member of which, if not 

 more, is still so engaged. Three of his eminent relatives have already 

 been noticed in the third volume of this work. 



Johann George Gmelin, apothecary at Tubingen, who was born in 

 1674, and died in 1728, had three sons, all of whom devoted them- 

 selves to chemistry and the allied sciences. The eldest Johaun Conrad 

 Gmelin (boru 1707) was a physician and apothecary at Tubingen; 

 his grandson, * Christian Gottlob Gmelin (boru 1792) is now professor 

 of chemistry iu the same university. The second is the subject of 

 the article [GMKLTN, JOHN GEORGE] in vol. in. The third son, Philip 

 Friedrich Gmelin (born 1722), succeeded the last-mentioned in his 

 professorship of chemistry and botany at Tubingen, and died there 

 in 1768. His elder son was [GMELIN, SAMUEL GOTTLIEB], and his 

 younger soa [GMELIN, JOHN FREDERICK], who succeeded him in 

 that chair, and afterwards became professor of chemistry at Got- 

 tingen, was the father of the distinguished man we have now to 

 commemorate. 



LEOPOLD GMELIN was born at Gb'ttingen on the 2nd of August 

 1788. From 1799 to 1804 he attended the Lyceum in that city, and 

 in the sunimer of 1804, bis father's lectures on mineralogy. In the 

 autumn of the same year, he went to Tiibingen, where he practised 

 chemical manipulation in the pharmaceutical laboratory of -his near 

 relation, Dr. Christian Gmelin (the son of Jobann Conrad Gmelin and 

 father of Christian Gottlob Gmelin, both already mentioned), and 

 attended Killmeyer's lectures on chemistry. In the autumn of 1805 

 he returned to Gottingen, where he devoted himself with zeal to all 

 branches of medical science, but especially to chemistry, for which he 

 attended Stromeyer's lectures ; he also studied mathematics. After 

 passing a distinguished examination, he went, in the summer of 1809, 

 to Wiirtemberg, and thence to Switzerland, which he traversed in all 

 directions, hammer in hand. From the autumn of 1809 to Easter 

 1811 he remained in Tubingen, and then went to Vienna, where he 

 visited the hospitals, and carried out, in Jaequin's laboratory, the 

 greater part of the experiments, which form the basis of his Doctor- 

 dissertation ' On the Black Pigment of the Eye,' published in 1812, 

 and afterwards in the tenth volume of Schweigger's Journal. He left 

 Vienna in the spring of that year, and went to Italy, where he 

 remained till the spring of 1813, chiefly at Naples, but for some time 

 also at Rome. 



The observations and collections made in these journeys supplied 

 the principal materials of the chemico-mineralogical investigations 

 which formed the subject of his ' Habilitation-Schrift ' or thesis at 

 Heidelberg, ' On hauyne, and minerals related to it, together with 

 geognostic observations on the mountains of ancient Latium,' pub- 

 lished in 1814. On hi<? way back to Gottingen he stayed some time 

 at Heidelberg, where the professor of chemistry, George Succow, being 

 then recently dead, Gnjelin was encouraged to give lectures on that 

 science. Availing himself of the opportunity thus presented, he 

 obtained the ' venia docendi ' ia Heidelberg, spent the remainder of 

 the summer at Gottiogen, making the necessary preparations of this 

 new duties, and ia the autumn of the same year began his career as 

 an academic teacher in Heidelberg, which he subsequently pursued 

 with zeal and success for nearly forty years. Twelve months after- 

 wards he was appointed extraordinary professor of chemistry in the 

 university. His celebrated ' Handbook of Chemistry ' was then 

 already begun. In the autumn of 1814, he went to Paris, and 

 occupied himself chiefly with practical researches in Vauquelin's 

 laboratory. Two years afterwards he married Luise Maurer, the 

 daughter of a clergymen of Heidelberg, and settled there, declining 

 the appointment of professor of chemistry at Berlin, whither he 

 was invited in 1817, to succeed Klaproth [KLAPROTH, MARTIN 

 HENRY], who died in that year. He was eoon afterwards made 

 ordinary professor of medicine and chemistry at Heidelberg. In 

 1885, he declined an invitation to fill the chair of chemistry at 

 Gottingen, preferring to remain in his adopted home, although his 

 emoluments there were much less than they would have been either 

 at Gottingen or at Berlin. In the latter portion of his life he was so 

 completely engrossed with the gigantic labour of preparing the fourth 

 edition of his 'Handbook,' that he became quite neglectful of his 

 health. In 1848, he had an attack of paralysis, which, though it only 

 deprived him for a while of his power of action, destroyed the fresh- 

 ness and vigour of his manner ; and elasticity of spirit. But he still 

 worked at his ' Handbook ' with untiring assiduity, as shown by the 

 volumes which afterwards appeared. In 1850, he was again attacked 

 by paralysis, which obliged him to resign his professorial functions. 

 He still however remained active in the cause of science, and laboured 

 earnestly at the second volume of the ' Organic Chemistry,' which he 



completed in May 1852. But from that time his powers, both mental 

 and bodily, rapidly declined ; an insidious disease of the brain was 

 steadily gaining ground. In the spring of 1853 it became evident 

 that his end was approaching, and he died on the 13th of April, iu 

 the sixty-fifth year of his age. 



Leopold Gmelin's original researches in chemistry are numerous ; 

 they aro all of high character, and as complete as the means of investi- 

 gation existing at the time when they were instituted would admit. 

 In 1820 he undertook, in conjunctiou with Tiedeinann, a series of 

 experiments on digestion ; and iu 1826 and 1827 these two philosophers 

 published their celebrated work, entitled 'Die Verdauung nach Ver- 

 suchen.' But the greatest service which he rendered to science, "a 

 service in which," in the words of competent authority, " he surpassed 

 all his predecessors and all his contemporaries" consisted in the pro- 

 duction of his ' Handbuch der Chemie,' the beginning and later pro- 

 gress of which have been mentioned above. The late Dr. Thomas 

 Thomson, F.R.S., afterwards Regius Professor of Chemistry in the 

 University of Glasgow, had published the earlier editions of his 

 1 System of Chemistry,' in which he reduced to order, in a clear and 

 exact manner, the facts of the science, scattered at the time he wrote 

 over a thousand different publications, and had thus himself conferred 

 an inestimable benefit, especially on British chemists; other writers 

 also had arranged large quantities of materials iu systematic order ; 

 but for completeness and fidelity of collation, and consecutiveness of 

 arrangement, Gmelin's ' Handbook ' is unrivalled. In it the known 

 facts of the science are condensed into the smallest possible space, 

 but nevertheless it presents a complete picture of them. Detached 

 and long-forgotten observations of other chemists were often indebted 

 to the author for first giving them their true value. In this great 

 work, to use the words adopted, in 1854, by the President of the 

 Chemical Society of London, of which Gmelin was a foreign member, 

 he " sets the example of putting together, in a purely objective view, 

 and on the authority of the several investigators, all that has been 

 observed within the domain of chemistry, not, indeed, withholding 

 his own opinions, but placing them side by side with those of others, 

 and never suppressing the latter." 



The ' Handbook of Chemistry,' moreover, has often directed atten- 

 tion to deficiencies and contradictions in existing chemical knowledge, 

 and has thus given rise to new investigations ; it has also been widely 

 influential in extending an accurate knowledge of chemistry, not only 

 in Germany, but wherever the science is cultivated. The first edition, 

 which appeared in the years 1817-1819, included in a comparatively 

 small space the extent of chemical science then known ; the fourth, 

 which was the last prepared by Gmelin himself, was published from 

 1843 to 1852, and comprehends inorganic chemistry, but, unfor- 

 tunately, only a small part of organic chemistry. From this the 

 English edition, now in course of publication under the auspices of 

 the Cavendish Society, is translated by Mr. Henry Watts, B.A., Fellow 

 of the Chemical Society of London, of whose ' Quarterly Journal' he is 

 also the editor. The additions made by him bring the ' Handbook' 

 down to the existing state of chemical science at the time of publica- 

 tion of each volume. The desire to make this work generally available 

 to British chemists, was one of the motives which originally contri- 

 buted to the establishment of the Cavendish Society. The first 

 volume was published 'at the end of the year 1848; the eleventh, 

 being the fifth of organic chemistry, has recently appeared (November 

 1857). The translation is continued from a new German edition. 



In the 'Annals of Philosophy' for August and September 1814, 

 (Series I., vol. iv., pp. 115, 193,) a few months only after the appearance 

 of Gmelin's Thesis in Germany, Dr. Thomson published satisfactory 

 abstracts in English of the geological and miueralogical portions 

 respectively. Of his dissertation on the black pigment of the eye, 

 Dr. Thomson gave a short account in the same work for January 

 1816 (vol. vii., p. 54,) ia which Gmelin's examination of the iuk of the 

 cuttle-fish, which he had found to possess very nearly the same pro- 

 perties with the black pigment, is compared with Dr. Prout's, then 

 recently published. 



GOGOL, N1KOLAY IVANOVICH, is a writer on whose merits a 

 singular diversity of opiniou still prevails among the Russian public, 

 some of his admirers maintaining that he is " the Homer of Russian 

 life," while other critics, more in acoordau.ee with the opinion of foreign 

 readers, describe him as merely " the author of some amusing novels.' 1 

 Gogol himself towards the close of his life sunk into a religious 

 melancholy, made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, destroyed his 

 unpublished writings, and is said to have believed that some of his 

 most popular works had been written under the inspiration of the 

 devil. Several publications have appeared relating to him, two of 

 which, an ' Essay on his Life,' and * Memoirs of his Life ' (two vols. of 

 more than 700 pages, 1856), are by the same person, a friend of 

 Gogol's, who conceals himself under the pseudouyme of Nicholas 



M but whose real name is said to be Kuliesh. In the earlier 



of these works Gogol is said to have been born on the 31st of March 

 (N.S.) 1810 ; in the later, on the same day in 1809. He died at 

 Moscow on the 5th of March (N.S.; 1852. 



* GRAHAM, THOMAS, a distinguished chemist, and Master of the 

 Mint, was born in Dec. 1805, at Glasgow, where his father was a manu- 

 facturer and merchant. Ha was educated at the City Grammar School, 

 and afterwards passed to the classes of the University of Glasgow. He 



